Disorder Under Heaven
Talk · zizekpodcast.com ·
2019-04-03 · 1:21:50 · 10,771 words
ideologycapitalismcommunism-socialismgeopolitics-warecology-climateliberalism-political-correctnessfascism-populismrace-antisemitismdemocracytechnology-ai-cyberspacehegel-dialecticspsychoanalysissexuality-genderrevolution-violencehistoryphilosophy-general
Žižek delivers a wide-ranging political lecture arguing that 'the idea of Europe', understood in a Hegelian sense, not as Brussels bureaucracy, remains the best available framework for confronting today's crises. He diagnoses four contemporary 'opiums of the people': religion, expertise, literal opiates/antidepressants, and populist appeals to 'the people' itself. The talk moves through authoritarian capitalism (China/Singapore model), ecological crisis and its ideological mismanagement, digital surveillance and Neuralink, the refugee and migration deadlock, antisemitism and Zionist antisemitism, identity politics and its class-dimension blind spot, and the failure of left culturalism after 1968. He concludes by defending a universalist emancipatory tradition rooted in the European Enlightenment, to be saved by radical heresy rather than nostalgic defence.
every located moment in this recording, click one to read it
The ideas in it 22
in the order they first come up; click a row for what he does with the idea here
as “the idea of Europe”
Not the Brussels bureaucracy but a Hegelian-inflected notion of Europe as the carrier of the emancipatory universalist legacy (feminism, workers' rights, Enlightenment reason) that Žižek insists is still worth defending.
as “authoritarian capitalism”
The successful formula combining full participation in the free world market with authoritarian political rule, exemplified by China and Singapore, which Žižek presents as the main danger of our era.
Žižek extends Marx's formula beyond religion to identify four contemporary opiums: religion/fundamentalism, expert knowledge, literal drugs/antidepressants, and 'the people' itself as a populist category.
Fetishization of expert knowledge as a form of ideology that shuts down political debate by substituting technocratic authority for democratic argument.
Žižek's proposed alternative to both nationalist populism and Brussels technocracy: transnational democratic mobilization adequate to global problems like ecology and digital control.
as “Alltagsideologie (everyday ideology)”
The ideological operation of making individuals personally responsible for systemic problems (e.g., 'recycle your cans') while letting them continue as consumers, thereby deflecting critique of the system.
as “Neuralink / wired brain”
Žižek treats the brain-computer interface as the paradigm case of future unfreedom: direct mind-to-mind sharing and neural control that the subject will experience as spontaneous free action.
The new mode of subjection in which individuals believe they are acting freely while their behavior is comprehensively monitored and subtly steered, illustrated by the rat-control experiment where the rat believes it moves on its own.
as “Zionist antisemitism”
Žižek's term for the right-wing formula, traceable to Heydrich, of supporting Jewish people in Israel as a 'wall against Islamists' while rejecting their presence in Europe, now embraced by figures like Breivik and echoed by Netanyahu-friendly far-right parties.
as “cogito without sex”
Žižek's reconstruction of Cartesian feminism: early women Cartesians argued that the cogito has no sex, thereby opening a space for radical contingency of sexual identity that is genuinely modern feminism, not a return to feminine archetypes.
as “predestination and active mobilization”
Drawing on Protestant theology and Stalinism, Žižek argues that accepting a bad situation as 'fate' is paradoxically compatible with, indeed demands, extreme political activity: you can change fate itself by accepting it and counteracting it.
The fashionable anti-Eurocentric posture that makes 'Europe is the source of all evil' the default enlightened-left position, which Žižek rejects as self-defeating since the very concepts used to criticize Europe are products of European emancipatory thought.
as “disorder under heaven”
Mao Zedong's slogan, 'There is great disorder under heaven, so the situation is excellent', repurposed by Žižek to argue that the breakdown of existing hegemony is an opportunity for the left rather than a pure catastrophe.
Borrowed from T.S. Eliot: sometimes only a radical heresy can save what is worth saving in a tradition; today only a radical green-left heresy can save the idea of Europe.
as “UNESCO universalism”
Žižek's pejorative label for false, celebratory multiculturalism that treats every culture as 'beautiful in its own way,' masking a condescending relativism that avoids genuine universality.
as “surplus enjoyment (Mehrgenuss)”
The secret profit extracted from apparent self-humiliation: white liberal 'nobodies' who proclaim their guilt and nothingness in fact gain a monopoly on judging others, a surplus enjoyment in the position of zero-point.
Žižek proposes reading the '+' in 'LGBT+' not as an empirical placeholder for undiscovered identities but as the psychoanalytic excess, the subject who directly identifies with the surplus that disturbs any fixed identity, akin to the Cartesian subject.
as “obscene subterranean identity”
The secret underside of an institution, here the Catholic Church's collective tolerance of clerical pedophilia, which is not merely individual pathology but part of the institution's structural identity.
as “toxic masculinity as medicalization”
Žižek's critical reading of the APA's designation of toxic masculinity as an illness: just as homosexuality was once pathologized, now a socio-ideological construct is medicalized, opening the door to pharmaceutical 'solutions' and a new conformism.
as “real enemies”
Against the left-cultural thesis that the enemy is always a projection of our own unresolved trauma, Žižek insists that there are genuine external enemies (Islamists, fundamentalists, etc.) that must be named as such.
Post-1968 shift whereby the left systematically translated social and economic problems into cultural/psychological ones (racism as projection, oppression as misrecognition), abandoning class analysis and enabling right-wing populists to occupy the social terrain.
as “fetishistic disavowal”
The Freudian Verleugnung structure, 'Je sais bien, mais quand même' (I know very well, but nonetheless), which Žižek applies to ecological crisis: we know the facts but go on as though we do not.
Stories he reaches for 10
Three days after the 2011 tsunami, Jean-Pierre Dupuy was in Fukushima with a European delegation and learned firsthand that the Japanese government nearly had to evacuate all of Tokyo, illustrating the scale of ecological catastrophe that market mechanisms or individual action cannot handle.
“For a couple of hours Japanese government was in a total panic because they thought that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, million people.”
Scientists wire a rat's motor nerves to a computer, turning it into a remote-controlled vehicle. When they test the equivalent on humans, the controlled subject still believes they are acting freely, the paradigm of invisible unfreedom.
“You press a button and then rat becomes a remote-controlled car, you can steer it around... If you are controlled in this way... I will still think that I act freely.”
Reinhard Heydrich wrote in 1936 that he wished Jewish people well, but not in Germany; they should go to Palestine. Žižek identifies this as the structural template for today's 'Zionist antisemitism' embraced by figures like Breivik and implicitly by Netanyahu-friendly right-wingers.
“Reinhard Heydrich. That guy who wrote in '36, 'We wish Jewish people all the best. But not here. Go to Palestine, we will support you there, just not here.'”
Occasionally students ask Žižek to take them into analysis; his invariable answer is 'if you want this, you must really be in trouble' given his own nervous tics, a self-deprecating aside before deploying the concept of Mehrgenuss.
“If you want this, you must really be in trouble, you know, with all my nervous tics and so on.”
In a synagogue, the rabbi, then a rich merchant, then a poor Jew each prostrate themselves as 'nobodies before God.' One of the rich men then stabs the other: 'Who is this guy, thinking he can be a nobody like us?', illustrating how self-humiliation confers a monopoly on judgment.
“Then a poor Jew stands up and says, 'I am also a nobody.' And then one of the rich ones stabs the other and says, 'But who is this guy? He just thinks that he can be a nobody like us.'”
When Napoleon's army approached the Haitian slave rebellion, they expected to hear African tribal songs; instead they heard the Marseillaise. Žižek uses this to argue that true emancipation proceeds by claiming universalism more radically than its originators, not by retreating to particular identities.
“And they got shocked when they approached it. You know what the black army was singing? Marseillaise.”
Žižek recounts Sloterdijk's question: which person from our epoch will have monuments built to them in future? Sloterdijk answers Lee Kuan Yew, inventor of the economically successful but authoritarian Singapore model, the template for authoritarian capitalism.
“Sloterdijk's answer is Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, who invented this formula of very successful economically capitalist but authoritarian regime.”
A source close to Deng Xiaoping's daughter reports that when dying party members asked him what his greatest achievement was, he said not 'opening China' but resisting full Western democracy and keeping the party in power, revealing that the real formula was authoritarian capitalism from the start.
“When Deng Xiaoping was dying, he said 'No. That I resisted at that point, with economic reforms, also full Western democracy. That I said no, stop, the party has to remain in power.'”
In Rotherham, England, a Pakistani youth gang systematically raped young white working-class girls for years; police refused to investigate for fear of being accused of Islamophobia, illustrating the danger of paternalist multiculturalism that silences real problems.
“Police said, 'No, no, no, if we investigate this, we will be accused of Islamophobia.' I think this is not respect for Islam. This is treating them in a paternalist way.”
Bannon opened a school in Rome to educate right-wing populists in how to bring disunity to Europe. Žižek takes this as evidence that Europe still stands for something, the bad guys hate it because its emancipatory idea is a threat to authoritarian capitalism.
“He opened a school in Rome to educate right-wing populist how to bring disunity to Europe.”
Works invoked 2
A friend's book arguing that radical ecology cannot elevate nature into a substantial Mother or natural rhythm; Žižek cites approvingly to support his rejection of ecological romanticism.
T.S. Eliot's conservative work; Žižek extracts and repurposes its core metaphor, 'only a radical heresy can save what is worth saving in a religion', as his concluding thesis about Europe.
People invoked 34
Tarana Burke positive
Presented as the true origin of Me Too, a Black woman who built it as a mass working-class movement, whose letter of protest against its celebrity co-optation is cited approvingly.
Mahatma Gandhi negative
Implicitly demoted: what is good in India is attributed to Ambedkar's universalism, not Gandhi's appeal to ancient tradition.
Matteo Salvini negative
Named as one of the right-wing forces that appropriated and co-opted the Yellow Vests movement.
Narendra Modi negative
Named as an Indian instance of the authoritarian capitalism formula: economically successful capitalism combined with ethnic-religious nationalist authoritarianism.
Jean-Pierre Dupuy positive
Described as 'a friend of mine, excellent theorist of catastrophes'; his firsthand account of the Fukushima near-evacuation is cited to support the seriousness of ecological crisis.
Jacques Derrida positive
Cited as the source of the 'nobody' synagogue joke, which Žižek deploys to illustrate the privilege hidden inside white liberal self-humiliation.
Cited (via Sloterdijk) as the inventor of the authoritarian-capitalist formula (Singapore) who will be recognized by monuments, named as the danger to diagnose, not to praise.
Steve Bannon negative
His Rome school for right-wing populists is cited as evidence that Europe's emancipatory idea is still threatening enough to require systematic destruction.
Deng Xiaoping positive
His deathbed remark that his greatest achievement was refusing Western democracy is cited (cautiously, without praise) as evidence that authoritarian capitalism was a deliberate strategic formula.
Toussaint Louverture positive
Cited with admiration as the leader of the Haitian slave revolution, whose army sang the Marseillaise, and recognized by the Jacobins; embodies the universalist emancipatory ideal.
Cited as exemplifying anti-immigrant wall politics, national emergency abuse, and disruption of European unity; but Žižek also proposes learning from the national emergency precedent.
B. R. Ambedkar positive
Identified as the true father of Indian independence (over Gandhi), an Enlightenment universalist rather than a revivalist of ancient traditions.
Chantal Mouffe negative
Žižek rejects her left populism formula, arguing it hasn't worked (except modestly in Bolivia) and that 'the people' functions as ideological narcotic.
Álvaro García Linera positive
Called 'sort of my friend' and cited as the more cautious, successful example of left government in Bolivia, contrasted positively with Venezuelan-style left populism.
Will Self negative
His iPhone/coltan shaming of an audience is cited as a paradigm case of everyday ecological ideology that deflects systemic critique onto individual guilt.
Nancy Fraser positive
Her term 'authoritarian neoliberalism' is invoked as an intellectual reference point for discussing China's political-economic model.
Elon Musk negative
Cited as popularizer of 'Neuralink' / wired-brain technology, which Žižek presents as a tremendous danger of invisible neural control.
T. S. Eliot positive
Conservative British poet whose metaphor in On the Idea of a Christian Society, 'only a radical heresy can save what is worth saving in a religion', is deployed as Žižek's concluding image.
Yanis Varoufakis positive
Described as 'my friend with whom I have differences but basically I support'; cited as admitting the Greek fiasco shows the limits of national-level resistance to international capital.
Carl Jung negative
Warned against in the context of feminist appeals to 'the feminine principle', Jungian archetypes reinforce rather than challenge patriarchy.
Benjamin Netanyahu negative
His call for French Jews to emigrate to Israel is criticized for playing into the hands of French antisemites and reproducing the Heydrich formula.
Anders Behring Breivik negative
His manifesto's pro-Zionist, anti-European-Jewish formula is cited as a prime instance of Zionist antisemitism.
Peter Sloterdijk positive
Described as 'my right-wing friend who is not an idiot'; his question about Lee Kuan Yew monuments is cited approvingly to identify the authoritarian capitalist formula.
His 'fuck left and right' populist stance and Podemos's eventual decline into moderate social democracy are cited as illustrating the limits of listening-to-the-people politics.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez positive
Her Green New Deal spending proposal is defended against expert criticism: historical examples (WWII spending, Reagan) show that large directed expenditure can work even economically.
PiS government in Poland described as 'a nightmare' yet paradoxically cited for introducing old social-democratic measures (lower retirement age, worker protections) that the left failed to deliver.
Greta Thunberg positive
Praised highly; her autism is reread as a structural political virtue, refusal of fetishistic disavowal, akin to Antigone's dogmatism.
Angela Merkel negative
Criticized for her 'paranoid' reaction to Greta Thunberg, suggesting dark forces must be behind a young girl, an ideological defensive maneuver.
Žižek is critical of Mao overall but declares himself 'in love with' the statement 'Great disorder under heaven, the situation is excellent,' which he repurposes for left strategy.
Reinhard Heydrich negative
Identified as the structural originator of 'Zionist antisemitism', his 1936 memo supporting Jewish emigration to Palestine while rejecting their European presence.
Vladimir Putin negative
Identified as a key force working to undermine European unity by supporting every secessionist or nationalist movement (Catalonia, Brexit, etc.).
René Descartes positive
Defended against the 'bad Descartes, rational imperialism' cliché; Cartesian feminism (cogito has no sex) and the Cartesian subject as '+' (excess over any fixed identity) are celebrated.
Sigmund Freud positive
Freudian concept of Verleugnung (fetishistic disavowal) deployed to analyze collective denial of ecological crisis and normalization of torture.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel positive
Invoked throughout: the Hegelian sense of 'the idea of Europe,' Hegel on Protestantism and predestination as ground for active mobilization, and Hegel's formulation of sexual difference (man, woman, transgender as 'the difference as such').
What it argues
The idea of Europe as emancipatory universalist legacy worth defendingAuthoritarian capitalism as the successful combination of free markets and political authoritarianismFour opiums of the people: religion, expertise, drugs, and populismDigital surveillance and Neuralink as unfreedom experienced as freedomThe culturalization of the left after 1968 as a catastrophic wrong turnUniversalism vs. identity politics: fighting for universality itself rather than particular identitiesEcological crisis and fetishistic disavowal: 'I know very well, but nonetheless'
Dialectical moves 12
“The most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom that you don't even experience as a limitation of your freedom.”
Digital and neural control is most effective when subjects believe they are acting entirely freely, the perfection of domination is its invisibility.
“'People' as the opium of the people — opium and the people.”
The classical Marxist formula is turned on itself: it is not just religion but the very populist appeal to 'the people' that functions as an ideological narcotic blocking genuine political analysis.
“Far from being a primitive Orientalist control system, China's digital social credit is what we ourselves are already doing in a more subtle way.”
The dismissal of China as exotic Other deflects attention from the West's own equivalent surveillance infrastructure.
“If nature is our Mother, it's a deep bitch of a dirty Mother.”
The ecological ideal of returning to natural balance is undermined by the fact that nature itself has produced catastrophes far worse than anything humans have done, there is no pristine origin to restore.
“The left in power is best for implementing austerity — the best austerity program you can get is to have the left in power.”
The parties ostensibly opposed to austerity (Syriza/Greece) prove to be its most effective enforcers, while the right-wing populists adopt old social-democratic measures.
“Those who appear to humiliate themselves as 'nobodies' thereby gain a monopoly on judging everyone else.”
The psychoanalytic logic of surplus enjoyment: apparent self-abasement (white liberal guilt, multicultural self-flagellation) secretly produces the greatest privilege, the position of zero-point judge.
“The true danger — in a good sense — is blacks who say your white universality is not yet truly universal: we must be better Europeans than you.”
The genuinely emancipatory move is not to affirm a particular identity against universalism but to claim universalism for oneself by exposing the gap between its promise and its existing realization.
“By believing in fate (predestination), Protestantism grounded an extremely active attitude — and even Stalinism demanded extreme mobilization while being determinist.”
Accepting catastrophe as fate does not counsel passivity but paradoxically demands the most intense active engagement, one can change fate itself by accepting it and counteracting it.
“Specific Chinese way is precisely universal capitalism which you introduce into...”
China's appeal to 'socialism with Chinese characteristics' inverts into its opposite: the 'specific' path turns out to be the most thorough adoption of universal capitalism.
“Antigone is the dogmatic — she doesn't give arguments, she says 'Fuck off, I want to bury my brother.' And we may need more of this approach.”
Against liberal deliberative norms, Žižek reclaims a certain ethical dogmatism, refusing to negotiate on fundamental commitments, as a condition of genuine political agency, illustrated by Antigone and Greta Thunberg.
“Greta's autism is part of her message: 'Cut off your mais quand même.'”
Thunberg's refusal to play rhetorical games is structurally identical to Antigone's dogmatism: it short-circuits the fetishistic disavowal ('I know very well, but nonetheless') that paralyzes ecological politics.
“The most dangerous attitude toward ecology is not outright denial but common-sense skepticism: 'Maybe it's not so bad, let's be careful.'”
Moderate, 'reasonable' hesitation is more ideologically effective than denial because it accommodates enough knowledge to foreclose urgent action while appearing responsible.
Claims 22
asserts
The idea of Europe — in the Hegelian sense — is not only the best but possibly the only emancipatory resource we have today.European universalism
asserts
China's economic success proves that the winning formula is authoritarian capitalism — full market integration combined with party political control — rather than either liberal democracy or traditional communism.authoritarian capitalism / China model
asserts
The left faces not one but four opiums of the people today: religion, expert fetishism, literal drugs, and populist appeals to 'the people.'contemporary ideology
rejects
Left populism (à la Chantal Mouffe) does not work: 'the people' functions as an ideological narcotic, and the only real victories of left populism (Bolivia excepted) are fiascos.left populism / Mouffe
asserts
Ecological crisis cannot be regulated through market mechanisms or left to science alone; it requires transnational coordinated action — some version of communism.ecology and political solutions
rejects
Everyday ecological ideology — recycling, personal carbon responsibility — is pure Alltagsideologie: it makes individuals personally responsible in order to prevent systemic critique.consumer environmentalism
asserts
The new digital mode of control is more dangerous than the old police state because subjects experience it as freedom — the most dangerous unfreedom is one you don't experience as a limitation.digital surveillance and subjective freedom
reframes
The refugee crisis should not be framed as a humanitarian problem but as a political-economic one: the West must address the causes it has participated in creating (Iraq war, support for Gulf autocracies, land grabs in Africa).refugee and migration crisis
rejects
Simply opening borders to all refugees would hand Europe to right-wing populists within years — the correct response is not open borders but addressing root causes.open-borders humanitarian left position
asserts
Zionist antisemitism — supporting Jews in Israel as a bulwark against Islam while rejecting their presence in Europe — is a real and growing form of antisemitism whose father is Reinhard Heydrich.antisemitism and Zionism
asserts
The fight against antisemitism in Europe and the fight against Israeli policy on the West Bank are two sides of exactly the same universalist struggle.universalism, antisemitism, and Israel-Palestine
rejects
Anti-Eurocentrism is self-defeating because the very conceptual tools used to criticize Europe are products of the European emancipatory tradition.anti-Eurocentrism
asserts
The true father of Indian independence is not Gandhi but Ambedkar, and independence was enacted through Enlightenment universalism, not a return to ancient traditions.Indian independence and universalism
asserts
Post-1968 culturalization of leftist politics — translating social problems into cultural-psychological ones — is the origin of the left's catastrophic failure.the cultural turn of the left
asserts
The left's loss of ordinary working people to right-wing populism has a class dimension that political correctness systematically conceals.class and political correctness
asserts
Right-wing populists are currently the only political force daring to propose old social-democratic measures, while the left in power (Greece) implements the most brutal austerity.right-wing populism and social policy
rejects
The APA's medicalization of 'toxic masculinity' reproduces the same pathologizing logic that once classified homosexuality as an illness, and it enforces a new conformism against necessary dogmatic action.toxic masculinity / medicalization
asserts
The true radical move in identity politics is not multiplying particular identities but fighting for universality itself — being 'better Europeans than Europeans.'identity politics and universalism
rejects
Ordinary people should be listened to for their problems and anxieties, but they will not supply answers — the left must reinvent politics rather than deferring to popular wisdom.populist and Maoist deference to 'the people'
asserts
Only a radical green-left heresy can save what is worth saving in the idea of Europe.Europe's emancipatory future
asserts
Incompatibilities between ways of life in the context of immigration must be spoken about openly; silencing them creates votes for the far right.immigration and cultural incompatibility
asserts
Brexit will leave the UK even more brutally exposed to international capital without the minimal protections that EU membership affords.Brexit
Quotes 15
“The most dangerous unfreedom is the unfreedom that you don't even experience as a limitation of your freedom.”Slavoj Žižek · invisible digital control
“If nature is our Mother, it's a deep bitch of a dirty Mother.”Slavoj Žižek · against ecological romanticism
“There is great disorder under heaven, so the situation is excellent.”Slavoj Žižek · crisis as opportunity (Mao, repurposed)
“Only a radical green-left heresy can change the idea of Europe. That's our duty.”Slavoj Žižek · radical heresy saving Europe
“The best Marxist books are always reports on the failure — very convincing books on why things went wrong, why Hitler had to win in Germany, why Stalin had to win in Soviet Union.”Slavoj Žižek · Marxist retrospective determinism
“The most dangerous profession in China today is to be a Marxist obsessed with ecological concerns.”Slavoj Žižek · irony of Chinese authoritarian capitalism
“You cannot understand resistance against political correctness without the class dimension — and that's what Donald Trump used in a masterful way.”Slavoj Žižek · class dimension of political correctness
“The struggle should be for universality itself. Every white liberal loves it when black people want African roots. The true danger — in a good sense — is blacks who say, 'Your white universality is not yet truly universal. We must be better Europeans than you.'”Slavoj Žižek · radical universalism / Haiti logic
“Even those who criticize Eurocentrism usually do it by strictly relying on emancipatory rhetoric developed as part of European enlightenment.”Slavoj Žižek · self-defeating anti-Eurocentrism
“Her autism is part of her message: 'I just know it very well. Cut off your mais quand même.'”Slavoj Žižek · Greta Thunberg as Antigone / against fetishistic disavowal
“When we will know for sure, it will definitely be too late.”Slavoj Žižek · urgency of ecological action despite uncertainty
“If there was a toxically masculine agent it's Antigone. And so at the end we will learn that Antigone is a man or whatever.”Slavoj Žižek · toxic masculinity medicalization / dogmatism
“I don't understand our myself, how could I understand you? You probably don't understand yourselves, Islamists don't.”Slavoj Žižek · limits of liberal multicultural understanding
“What China did is to combine brutal liberal capitalism and a strong authoritarian state in an extremely successful way.”Slavoj Žižek · authoritarian capitalism as synthesis
“Cogito doesn't have a sex. It opens up a space. This is modern feminism — not 'oh, balance, emphasize feminine element' but to accept the radical ultimate contingency of your sexual identity.”Slavoj Žižek · Cartesian feminism / cogito without sex
Transcript 11 turns
Slavoj Žižek
I really don’t want to talk too long because the partners are so interesting. I will try to make it as short as possible to open up the debate. And I wasn’t aware of this in advance, but I like what I was told now half an hour ago, this shift towards why Europe today. Because it’s so fashionable among many enlightened leftists in Europe to play this masochist game of so-called anti-Eurocentrismus. You know, like whatever happens in the Third World—I remember, maybe you remember it some years ago, for example, Rwanda war—all my radical leftist friends told me, "Oh, it must be an after-effect of European imperialism and neocolonialism and so on and so on." No, I think that in today's world, if we see where things are going, and after—let's face it—the fiasco of Latino American leftist populism, Europe—of course, not the existing simply Europe in Brussels and so on, but I'm an unashamed idealist here—I will say the idea of Europe in the Hegelian sense of this term is still, I'm sorry to tell you, not only the best thing, but maybe even the only thing that we have. What do you mean by this? It may sound a crazy thing for a leftist to say. Where do we stand today? It's fashionable to say by critics of communism that whatever you say about communism, not only was it a humanitarian catastrophe but economically it doesn't work. Unfortunately, we have today a case of Communist Party in power which economically not only it works, but it created the only genuine economic miracle of the last decades. Are you aware what China achieved in the last decades? Forget about British Industrialisierung or whatever. I don't think there was ever in the history of humanity such a creation of new wealth. They lifted out of poverty million people. Such an economic boom as China did it. Now you will say, I know, I suspect that I know, "Yes, because they allowed capitalism." That's not enough. I spoke with a person who was—I don't want to put him into trouble, so I will not tell his name—close to the daughter of Deng Xiaoping. And he told me that just after the death of Mao Zedong, he spoke with her, the daughter, who was, you know, when Deng Xiaoping was dying he was barely able to speak and she was the only one who was able like to follow. And she said that when Deng Xiaoping was dying, some high Nomenklatura members came to him and asked him this kissing the ass question like, "What is the greatest thing you did?" Everybody expected he will say "opening up China." He said, "No. That I resisted at that point, with economic reforms, also full Western democracy. That I said no, stop, the party has to remain in power." And I think, unfortunately—I'm not praising, I don't think we should become like China—I think that unfortunately he was right. The successful formula is precisely new authoritarian capitalism. It’s another form of what you quoted with Nancy Fraser, this—but this time is not progressive—authoritarian neoliberalism. Economically, full participation in the free world market; politically, an authoritarian regime. My right-wing friend—but who is not an idiot—Peter Sloterdijk said, asked an interesting question: if years from now they will be building monuments around the world, to which person they will build it from our epoch? Sloterdijk’s answer is Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, who invented this formula of very successful economically capitalist but authoritarian regime. And so what's the achievement of China? And I think China is even our main danger, to avoid the idea that I'm praising China. The left in the 20th century hated mostly, if I simplify it a little bit, two things: on the one hand this pure, brutal, unbridled liberal capitalism and at the same time a strong authoritarian state. What China did is to combine the two in an extremely successful way. And are we aware of the irony of what goes in China? The most dangerous profession—forget about you can be for capitalism, even for Western ideas, they tolerate it—the really dangerous thing today in China is to be a Marxist obsessed with ecological concerns. Then, you know that they are now serially arresting Marxist students there and so on and so on. So I am not—first, I don't want to stigmatize China. Often we project things onto China, but we are already doing them in a more subtle way. For example, you know that in China you already have this form of digital control and it's developing in such a fast way that ideally—but they are almost there—every citizen has its in the state of course computers his, her, their, let’s say identity, where his good points, bad points are noticed. For example, if you are convicted of something, if you engage in dissident activity, you lose points or blah-blah-blah. And this had very concrete consequences. I read somewhere these are official statistics that in million people were prohibited buying fast train tickets and plane tickets because their patriotic standard or whatever was too low. Now my point is what? It’s easy to make fun of this, "Yeah, yeah, China, primitive Orientals." We—if there is something to learn from all this Google, Cambridge Analytica and so on, problem is that we are doing the same things. Thing. And the big problem is what to do against this tendency, this new authoritarian capitalism. In India it's the same, Narendra Modi, in—this combination of economically successful capitalism with authoritarian, usually religiously or ethnically nationalist ideology dominating. And we are there. Did you read what happened a couple of days ago in Poland, in a northern city? I'm not saying it's a central event, but it's a clear sign. There was the first after the good old—I mean it ironically—Nazi times, public burning of the books. Local Catholic priests brought on a market in front of a church a big package of books, some Harry Potter novels and so on, and they burned them publicly. And media just took notice of it and so on and so on. That’s where we are. So, quickly not to lose time, I'm sorry. That we should ask ourselves—such a schizophrenic state, Nietzsche ideology, ideology. Today, I think, far from the idea that we live in a post-ideological state, ideology is stronger than ever. What type of ideology? I would like to take as a starting point Marx’s old Marxist notion of religion as opium of the people, not for the people. For the people is a naive enlightenment idea that there are secret priests who produce opium and so on. No, and although we still have religion as the opium for the people—different forms of fundamentalism, Muslim, Hindu, Christian and so on—there are three other opiums today that we should fight. Sorry, yes, opium so to be build. Another one is expertise. Are we aware in many economic debates how expert knowledge is fetishized? It’s simply referred to as "economists said this," "experts said this," and it’s mostly bullshit. I will give you an extremely simple example. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made now this Green Book proposal—sorry, Green proposal—where the idea is to spend a lot of money, tremendous amounts, for ecology. And economic experts immediately predicted, "This is madness, you cannot spend money like that." I'm sorry, but from my totally naive standpoint I'm saying, if historical experience shows something, is that you can do it. And if you do it in the right way, it works extremely well even economically. How did—what was the thing that drew United States out of the crisis finally? It was World War Two, with incredible spending, just empty spending in the sense that it was not immediately productive, it was just you spend it for arms. Didn’t Reagan do the same? And Trump is doing today the same. So we have expert knowledge that we should distrust, at least certain type of. But now comes my big point, of course. I think we have two other very important opiums of the people, which are—if you know dialectical spirit, you will not be surprised by my answer—opium and the people. First, opium. Are you aware what role—and opium is here for me a condensation for from simple sleeping pills, antidepressants to real opium. According to some analysis in United States, about of people who work in academia, professors, students, are already on Xanax or some type of drugs and so on and so on. So it’s this opium. Then I think "people" as the opium of the people. Of the opium of the people. That’s why, I'm sorry she is not here we could debate it, that's why I'm skeptical about the formula of promoted by Chantal Mouffe of links populismus. She says it works. Well, my first answer is "Sorry, where does it work? In Venezuela or where?" I mean, the only regime where leftist government did it relatively well is in Bolivia. They're much more moderate. I know vice president is sort of my friend, Álvaro García Linera. They are much more cautious, they do a good job. The problem with populism for me is that first, it’s usually associated with stronger nation state. The idea is, the enemy is international capital, the way to fight it is stronger nation state, which then could allow us to pass more workers' protection laws and so on and so on and so on. I don't think this works, if you ask me. I think that the only way to fight international capital is with new internationalism. And I think that precisely issues that we are confronting today—ecological crisis, new forms of digital control and so on—all ask, demand a new form of internationalism. So that I don't speak too long, just let me then go quickly through what are the problems that I see today. First, it’s of course ecology, ecological problems. And I think if you just do a kind of a spectral analysis of different ideologies associated with ecology, first one is the Donald Trump ideology. You ignore the problem, "Oh, it's a pseudo-problem invented by some crazy leftists who want to destroy American way of life." Okay, no, we shouldn't lose time with that. The second one is leave it to market forces. You know, we should just do taxation and so on. I think problems are too serious to leave it to that. The third way to deal with it is trust in science. Don't worry, soon there will be fusion, clear—clear source of energy and so on and so on, science will take care of it. I also don't trust this one. Now we come to ideology, ideology proper. The most dangerous almost—no, okay, there is one which is not so dangerous but I find maybe most disgusting—this basically conservative idea, and even many deep leftist, deep ecologists accept it. The idea is, we offended Mother Earth, we ruined the natural balance, the source of trouble is human hubris. So, we should limit ourselves to our proper place in nature and so on and so on. I absolutely reject this approach, not because I'm not such a pessimist, because I'm more of a pessimist. Very many—one friend of mine, an intelligent ecologist, wrote a book called *Ecology Without Nature*, claiming that if we want to be really a radical ecologist, you cannot elevate nature into a kind of a substantial Mother, natural rhythm, balance, to which we should return, which should set standards. Listen, think just about our sources of energy: oil, coal. Can you even imagine what kind of mega ecological catastrophes happened on our earth well before humankind was here? If nature is our Mother, it's a deep bitch of a dirty Mother, to put it like this. And you see, this doesn't mean "Oh, we can do anything." No, it means there is no simple way back to some natural balance. But the real danger, I think, is a certain everyday ecology propagated by media, by big companies and so on. The logic is this one, and that's Alltagsideologie, everyday ideology at its purest. They say, "But who are you just to criticize the state, to blame others? Did you do your duty? You think you are pure." Like when I had the debate with a writer called, it’s a beautiful name, Will Self, in London. He pathetically appealed to the people in the hall and said, "Show me, don't you have iPhones? Do you know that they all use coltan or what, a mineral, and so on and so on," like we should all be guilty. That's one side of the story, and then comes the moralizing. Then they say, "Did you do your duty? Did you separate all Coca-Cola cans? Did you put all the newspaper," you know, this is ideology because it makes you personally responsible with a clear message: "Don’t criticize society. Do your proper job," and then always at the same time it offers you an easy way out like "recycle, separate and you can basically," the message is, "you can go on being a consumerist that you are." I think that ecology is a serious problem, why? Because it is absolutely clear from what sciences—and I don't want to fetishize experts, I know how little we know about the logic of global warming, whatever we call it—but that you cannot regulate it simply through the market. A transnational coordinated action—once we called this some version of communism—will be necessary. A friend of mine, excellent theorist of catastrophes, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, told me that he was in Fukushima part of some European delegation three days after that tsunami, and that he knows firsthand there that for a couple of hours Japanese government was in a total panic because they thought that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, million people. And we will confront such situation. Who will do it, in what way? Now I will say something very problematic. I think that we cannot simply say "let the people speak," we should open ourselves to the people. This is for me a more refined but no less dangerous form of populism. This is one of the remainders of Maoism that I don't like. I respect ordinary people—no, this is even too patronizing to say. But don't elevate them into some kind of ordinary source of wisdom so that we corrupted intellectuals, whatever—no, talk with ordinary people, you will discover their worries, their anxieties, but you will not get any deep message what to do from them. We have to reinvent. Even democracy in this immediate sense, "let's ask the people," doesn't do the job. Second danger, I already mentioned it, digitalization of our lives. It's not only the total control. The old police state was rather naive, you know. You were small dissident, yes, and you turned your head quickly, you saw three Stasi agents following you, whatever, and there were limits to this. I mean, you cannot have all people controlled like this. With today's strong computer, you can do it. We can all have individual files, everybody can do it. But what I fear more is some is the—is this idea of the popular term by of Elon Musk is now Neuralink, wired brain. The direct contact of our brain with a computer and in this way we can share experiences, direct mind-to-mind contact and so on and so on. It's not science fiction. At a certain still modest level, it's already happening. I think this is a tremendous danger. New ways of how we will be controlled without even knowing that we are controlled. Let me amuse you with a story which already you know, but it’s for me a kind of a symbol. I have very many weird friends, one of them is making this type of experiments of controlling human minds, digitalizing them. And he told me a terrifying story. They already know how to control rat, the disgusting small animal, no? So that they already can do it so that you wire their nerves—the rat’s nerves—and by a computer, to cut a long story short, you have a box, you press the button and you control the nerves which direct the rat running around. I saw a video. You press a button and then rat becomes a remote-controlled car, you can steer it around. Now my friends are very evil in a progressive sense. They said, "Let's try the same with humans." They are afraid to go with this in public. And the result is pretty sad. Which result? They asked themselves the right question. If you are controlled in this way—it’s still very elementary, but it's progressing—how will you experience? Let's say I walk here as a nervous idiot that I am, around, and then you, Robert, the evil guy here, you press the button, you control. Will it be, "Oh my God, some foreign force is controlling me?" No, the first results are horrible. I will still think that I act freely. And this is, I think, the new type of control that we are confronting today. The most dangerous freedom is the freedom that you don't even experience as—I’m sorry, is unfreedom that you don't even experience as a limitation of your freedom. You think you are totally free, you surf the internet, buy things, whatever, everything is registered, you are subtly controlled and so on and so on. And now to conclude, I'm approaching the end, back to the third problem that I see: Flüchtlinge, refugees, immigrants, Europe and so on. The ideological hypocrisy in this field, I find it staggering. And I know how problematic is what I'm saying because I was called by right-wingers that my aim is to destroy Western culture, I was called by leftists of being a philosopher of Alternative für Deutschland and so on. I am neither, I am just like you, extremely worried about the rise of rightist populism. And as my friend Robert already emphasized, we should ask here deeper questions. One way to confront this problem is to play the wall game, Donald Trump game. It's mess out there, we are not part of it, so if we feel threatened let's build walls. This of course doesn't work. Why not? For the obvious reasons that today we live in one world. We are all part of it. Look where do refugees come from, many of them—Iraq, Syria. This is not their immanent for because of inner tensions war. The mega mistake was attack on American attack on Iraq, and it's such a beautiful piece of irony—did you notice it?—that precisely, you know, this was a nice moment of European politics when United States announced their plan to attack Iraq. You remember, this was a moment of glory of West Germany and France nonetheless. With many other West European powers, they opposed it. While the Visegrád post-communist government, they supported it, which is why they were celebrated by Donald Rumsfeld as the "New Europe" and so on and so on. And but isn't it a beautiful irony that they are now, although they participated in the process which triggered refugees, they are now the main opponents of bringing in refugees and so on and so on? I think the main danger with Flüchtlinge is again humanitarianism. No, no, no, I am all for helping them, don't—but this idea of perceiving it as a humanitarian problems: there are refugees there, what do we do, are we human or not, do we help them or not and so on and so on. What's my problem here? That if you act like this, you are destined to lose it. You act against the consequence. The first thing to do is to act—I don't like the work preemptively, but—to ask ourselves, how do we, developed West, participate in the processes which create refugees? For example, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a key factor in the Syrian war. Saudi Arabia should be isolated or whatever. Or for me, for example, this is for me a mega scandal: there are many refugees in Middle East, Arab and other countries. But only in the poor countries. That rich series of countries—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, let's name them, Bahrain, Qatar, Emirates—they simply don't take refugees and so on. So there is—and there are this would be one so problem for me. It this the other solution, this leftist humanitarian one: we are guilty, Europeans, so let's just open the borders, everybody can come in and so on and so on. Thanks, then you will have in years all Europe in the hands of populists, and then they will be doing what all Marxists always like to do. The best Marxist books are always reports on the failure, you know, very convincing books on why things went wrong, why Hitler had to win in Germany, why Stalin had to win in Soviet Union and so on and so on. I think that that again what we have to do is, for example, in Africa where also many refugees are coming, don't change it into a humanitarian problem. Ask yourself, how do we, developed West, participate in the process which is causing refugees? Look at for me one of the nightmarish places of the earth, Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a state-run so-called rogue state, central government doesn't function, local warlords operate there, but as such it’s fully integrated into global capitalism. What about that? What about another fact not written a lot about? That here we Europeans and Americans are not guilty, it’s mostly Arab countries and some Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and others. They are massively buying the best arable land in many poor Arab countries, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Madagascar and so on, growing mostly industrial plants for export and so on and so on. We should shift the terrain to this level. The last thing with refugees, I think that again we should step out of this deadlock where on the one hand there are anti-immigrant racist, we should absolutely clearly reject them, populists. But the right answer to them is not "No, there are no problems with immigrants." Of course there are problems, not because they are bad or we are bad, but there is a certain incompatibility of ways of life. I don't—I don't blame anyone here, but if we will not talk openly about these problems, I remember then we are lost. I remember a couple of years ago there was a big scandal but it was downplayed by the left in England. It happened in the Mid-British city, people, Rotherham. It was admitted even by left-liberal media like Guardian that it was a nightmare. What happened there was that they discovered that a Pakistani youth gang serially, systematically raped for years over young white, but very well selected, from poor families girls. And parents of these girls tried to—tried to—tried to mobilize police. Police said, "No, no, no, if we investigate this, we will be accused of Islamophobia" and so on and so on. I think this is not respect for Islam. This is treating them, as you put it, in a paternalist way. It's explosively dangerous, that's how you create votes for the new right and so on and so on. We simply have to talk openly about all these problems. Also, anti-Semitism in Europe. Something extremely dangerous is emerging recently, what I call Zionist anti-Semitism. And its father is, I am not kidding here, Reinhard Heydrich. That guy who wrote in '36, "We wish Jewish people all the best." You find the quote in two-three times in my books. "But not here. Go to Palestine, we will support you there, just not here. Let's not mix." And that's the formula of all today's right-wingers. Breivik, the Norwegian guy who killed young socialists, he wrote in his manifesto, "Jews, we should absolutely support them there as a wall against Islamists, but we don't need them here." And unfortunately the Israeli government is playing these games. I remember when half a year ago Netanyahu called to French Jews to come to Israel because there is anti-Semitism in France, the French anti-Semitic right enthusiastically greeted this, "Yeah, yeah, we agree with him, go—go to Israel, just not here." So you know what should be our position here? Not the naive one, "There is no anti-Semitism in Europe, it's only Islamophobic fantasy" and so on. There is, but it's a naive moralist stance but it's the only realist one for me. It's that the fight against anti-Semitism here and the fight against what Israel is doing on the West Bank are two sides of exactly the same struggle. You know, we should reject this victimizing logic from both sides. We should reject when Arabs say, "Okay, we are a little bit anti-Semitic but what Israel is doing now to us it's the same thing that Jews suffered in the World War Two," or exactly the same thing is done by aggressive Zionists who say basically that after we suffered so much in the Holocaust who has the right to reproach us for anything and so on and so on. It's so important to be universalist today. So now to conclude really, I think that the only—now I was just a pessimist, I in a wild improvisation enumerated these different problems we are faced with—we need not the existing Europe the way it is, Brussels bureaucracy and so on and so on, although even there I wouldn't agree that it's all just bad. I had a debate with an English friend who said a Brussels bureaucracy is international capital and so on and so on. So I asked another friend something very interesting: to bring me the list of all the conflicts between British government and Brussels bureaucracy in the last years. Sorry, almost in all the cases I'm on the side of Brussels. For example, I remember in Tony Blair years, there was a Brussels directive of maximum work weeks for—sorry, work hours for week, to prevent workers being exploited too much. Blair government protested, "It will limit our competitiveness." Then some ecological standard Europe tried to impose. Again British government protested and so on and so on. So even although it's not so bad, I still think that what we need desperately today to fight all these problems—like who will control these new modes of digital control, Neuralink and so on, who will con—you—it cannot be—it cannot be left to private companies, it also cannot be simply left to the political structure that we have today. We need new forms of, I call it naively, democratic mobilization which should be at least in the beginning pan-European. We have to step beyond national borders. We need international co—we need international cooperation. And I don't worry too much. It may look that we are lost and as you Peter told me, agree with—it—there is a certain projection that loss is already our fate. And we shouldn't fight it by saying, "No, the situation is not so bad" and so on and so on. We should confront the crisis. If things—we, enlightened Europeans—and I am not ashamed of this term, I hate this idea of, "Europe is the source of all evil" and so on and so on. Sorry, but even those who criticize Eurocentrism usually do it by strictly relying on emancipatory rhetoric developed as part of European enlightenment and so on and so on. So what I'm saying is that Europe has to offer something to the world, my God. The entire emancipatory tradition of modern times from feminism to workers' rights, healthcare and so on and so on is something that is strictly part of the European legacy. Now I'll say another aggressive thing: I don't buy that bullshit that, "Yes, but pre-modern societies have role of women important." Look at it closely. First, it’s mostly ideology. I love it, I read a report on a in New Guinea I think of a tribe which was officially matriarchal, "Ooh, feminine divinity," even like their village looked like this: the central sacred place was even formed like—like a vagina, you know, like... Okay, only one problem: only men had access to that to that place, you know. No, I mean, femin—I warn feminists not to fall into this Jungian, referring to Carl Gustav Jung, topic of, "We Europeans emphasized too much the masculine principle, we should return to some feminine principle" and so on. No, I proudly reclaim Cartesian talking about Descartes tradition. Do you know, it’s a thing that I don't think many of you know, you know who were the first modern in theory feminists? Ah, this is not yet known because we are so much hypnotized by this idea, "Bad Descartes, rational imperialism." Women followers of Descartes—okay, mostly rich of course, educated French women—asked why, they said because cogito doesn't have a sex. It—it opens up a space. I quote in my book precise sources of this first Cartesian fem—because this is modern feminism. It's not, "Oh, balance, we have more to emphasize feminine element" and so on and so on. It's to accept the radical ultimate contingency of your sexual of your sexual identity. So to conclude where do I see—so that I don't get lost, yes, sorry—on the one hand, you know, it's a subtle logic of fate. We shouldn't say, "It’s not so bad, we may have a chance." It is very bad. And if the scenario goes on, it’s a catastrophe. But, and here comes what we should learn from history. Hegel saw this very well. Look, Protestants believe in predestination. It’s fate. But there is a wonderful contradiction written in the very core of Protestantism. You would have thought that if there is predestination I stay at home and masturbate and watch pornography like it's all decided. No, precisely by this belief in fate, Protestantism grounded an extremely active attitude. And even you find traces of this even in Stalinism. This is the only good thing that I can say about Stalinism. They were determinist, necessity of communism, but at the same time they demanded extreme mobilization as if—if we are not active—this means that we should read predestination in a much more intelligent way, many intelligent Protestant theologians knew it. Predestination is our fate, but we—we can change in some sense the fate itself if you accept it as fate and counteract it. We can—we can do it. There is an opening, there is an opening. There is an opening, there is an opening there. And again I think that where we are fighting for Europe today, for the idea of Europe, and don't tell me this idea is an illusion. It’s an illusion which still mobilizes people. That's why what gives me hope for Europe is that my God, all the bad guys today hate Europe. There is no Putin, Trump—Trump is now sending—okay, not literally, he's in bad relations with him, but you know what Steve Bannon did now? I was there, they showed the building to me. He opened a school in Rome to educate right-wing populist how to bring disunity to Europe. Trump or Putin—Putin supports everyone just that it ruins European unity. It can be Catalonia, it can be Brexit, name it, and so on and so on. Why? Why is Europe such a thorn? It’s not just because it’s still a global power. The idea of Europe still stands for something that is traumatic, problematic in today's universe with this tendency towards authoritarian capitalism. Europe doesn't fit this model. That’s why I think we should remain proud Europeans. We should get rid—yes, we did horrible things, but okay, everybody did them. But we should resist this temptation of European masochism. You know, our main task is to be anti-Eurocentric and so on and so on. No, we should say, "Sorry, there are great things which are the European legacy." They are threatened today. And yes, we should criticize Europe. But be a little bit of a philosopher and look at how the very instruments, conceptual, theoretical notions, that we use to criticize Europe are strictly part of European legacy. And in India, when I was two years ago, they conceded this to me. You know, today's neocolonial power, they work very well, they love it when you have a nation which claims we should rediscover our old traditions and so on and so on. But look at India. Indian independence was effectively not enacted through return to some ancient traditions. It was to be very brutal, young, rich Indian liberals educated in Oxford, Cambridge and so on and so on. Honest Indians admit it today that the true father of independence, what is good in India, it’s not Gandhi, it's Ambedkar, who was an extremely crucial figure—let's not get lost there. What I'm just saying is this thing, to conclude really now, I'm sorry. Look, what how we should act, learn from the enemy. By "disorder under heaven," I of course meant that famous Mao Zedong statement—I’m very critical of Mao Zedong, but I’m in love still with that statement—"There is great disorder under heaven, so the situation is excellent." Okay, it’s not so excellent, just remember, don't lose nerves, that what figures like Trump and so on mean is that the hegemony of the existing order is breaking up. We live in confused times. We no longer have, as we had till recently, for example, in the United States—forget about Democrats, Republicans—but they shared a whole set of presuppositions, you know, and that hegemony is broken. And we should not lose nerves here but act. Take this insofar as we can as an opportunity. An example I promise to you, Robert, don't kill me, to be the last. You know, leftists were so shocked when Trump proclaimed emergency, national emergency, for a couple of thousand immigrants. Incidentally, you know what's my cynical reaction here? Does Trump at all believe in the greatness of America? I mean, is America really so weak that a couple of thousand of immigrants can destroy it and so on? I think the time for progressive Americans is not to say, "Trump is aggressively patriotic," but Trump is—isn't it much more effective strategy? Trump doesn't believe in American greatness, he is anti-patriotic and so on. That—and some intelligent right-wingers were shocked by that measure of Trump. And they said precisely their fear was right. They said Trump set a horrible precedent. What if the next president, maybe, maybe not, I don't know, will be a more than ever left-leaning Democrat? What if he proclaims green national emergency? Trump said, "You know, this is how we should act." Don't lose nerves. Enemy did something horrible, not just protest it, ask yourself, "Can we use it? Can we turn it?" This is the time for people to act. Not to look nostalgically at the old time of European—of European on American hegemony, but... I will conclude with a conservative—not another story, that’s what—conservative British poet who used, I often quote it, a nice metaphor in his very conservative book, T.S. Eliot, *On the Idea of a Christian Society*. He said sometimes only a radical heresy can save what is worth saving in a religion. Today, only a radical green-left heresy can change the idea of Europe. That’s our duty. Vielen Dank. Thank you. I’m sorry, I talked a little bit too long, but as you know, Robert, we should fight this metaphysical linear notion of time as measured by machines and so on. Thank you. The big difference between Stalinism and fascism is that after a leader gives a speech, in fascism the leader receives the applause. In Stalinism, the leader stands up and applauds himself, no? I will nonetheless to follow the second tradition. Okay, so I—I think, I'm almost afraid that where is blood between us, we seem to move in the same direction, so I will just if you permit me, I hope you know where I see—it’s not that universalism does not mean, "Oh, we are all together one big family." I hate this what I call UNESCO universalism. You know, those disgusting books published decades by—go on world culture and "Every culture is beautiful in its own way." No, every culture is horrible in its own way. Every culture has, how do you say, bodies, dead bodies in its closet. So I will tell you my experience which I think at least conceptually shows the way. Derrida, among others, told me this wonderful old—no, he—he uses it somewhere, but it’s circulating in my—this wonderful Jewish joke, which I think applies ideally—I will try to answer you what is false universalism—applies ideally to and precisely about this nowhere, you know, we are nowhere—to our situation. I'm sorry if you know the joke. It's that in a—in a synagogue, Saturday or whenever, Jewish believers meet and first the rabbi says in this self-humiliating way, "Oh my God, I am nobody, I betrayed you, I am not worth of your attention, I'm a nobody, ah-ah." Then a rich Jewish merchant stands up and said, "Oh my God, I am a nobody also, all my wealth is nothing, blah-blah-blah." Then a poor Jew stands up and says, "Uh-uh, my God, I am also a nobody." And then the rich—it doesn't matter who, one of the two rich ones—stabs the other and says, "But who is this guy? He just thinks that he can be a nobody like us or whatever," you know. I had exactly the same experience in a debate in Vereinigte Staaten where it was about multiculturalism and so on. And I warn you, there are now many very intelligent black theorists, they don't buy this bullshit identity politics, whatever, they are very intelligent, some of them even Hegelians, that. And one of them told me this experience. I was there—you know it was this multiculturalist and this white liberals, one after the other said, "Ooh, Eurocentrism, we are responsible to, we are responsible of everything, we are bad, we cannot be blah-blah-blah." And then he told me that he stood up and said, "In your spirit, but wait a minute, we also have our Muslim fundamentalists, you know, Louis Farrakhan and so on. We also have," and literally they look—the white liberal—like, "Wait a minute. No, no, you also want to be nothing? No, sorry. We are the ones who only can be." In other words, this—here I speak a little bit as not practicing psychoanalytiker, because you know, once it happens to me from time to time that when I give some class a student comes to me and says, "Can I go into analysis with you?" and my answer is always the same: "If you want this, you must really be in trouble, you know, with all my nervous tics and so on, you in never." Okay, so but nonetheless I would like to Begrif zu verwenden to apply this notion of Mehrgenuss, surplus. It you should al—when somebody humiliates himself too much, you should always ask what's their secret profit, you know. And their profit is clear: precisely by humiliating themselves—you find this so clear with this multi—these people of nowhere as you would have put it—they apparently humiliate themselves, "We are nowhere, blah-blah-guilty of everything." But this gives them a tremendous—I witness this almost on a daily basis in political debates—privilege. As such as nobodies, they think they have a monopoly on judging the others. I remember, I had a wonderful debate, I'm sorry if you know the story, in Missoula, Montana, with some native Americans. They don't like the name and I don't. You know my old joke: they one of them told me, "I much prefer to be called Indian. At least my name is a monument to white man’s stupidity who thought they were in India." They immediately see this trap: native American, "Ah, so we are nature, you are cultural American or what?" So how this apparent self-humiliation reserves to you this position of zero point, you are above all particular identities, you are... So the black guy then taught me, and I repeat this all the time, that the struggle should be for universality itself. Every white liberal loves it when black people want "uh, African roots, our identity, our ancient wisdom." No, the true danger—but in a good sense, for us good—is blacks who say, "No, your white people’s universality is not yet truly universal. We must be," to put it like this, "better Europeans than you." That's why I always celebrate for example, I always almost cry when I read about Haiti revolution. It's a most beautiful—every leftist should cry. You know, when black slaves rebelled there, Napoleon sent an army. And all honor goes here to Jacobins who immediately recognized Toussaint Louverture. Napoleon sent an army, killed them all. And then the French army approached the slave army and they thought they hear they heard some songs from the black army, and they thought it must be some primitive African tribal songs. And they got shocked when they approached it. You know what the black army was singing? Marseillaise. And all honor goes here, because I didn't say many good thing, to Polish regiment who change sides. Said, "Oh sorry, maybe we are on the wrong fighting on the—" You see the true struggle should be every position, even the most particular, has a certain notion of universality in it. It and we should fight so the the answer I agree with you is what was wrong in our universality so that we left out and to ordinary people it appeared that they had to protect their particularity and so on and so on and not to avoid this topic that you hinted at this feminist LGBT polemics and so on. I'm absolutely for LGBT plus, for Me Too and so on. But you know who are my ideals there? Remember this name, check it on internet: Tarana Burke, B-U-R-K-A. It's a black lady who really started Me Too before it became fashionable. And she wrote a public letter which was typically ignored. She started it as a mass movement of exploited woman sharing their experience and she is horrified at what became out of it. Instead of the focus of ordinary women, it became almost—I am ironic here, of course—a medium for failed actresses, "Sorry I was raped by that producer" and so on and so on. The same is with LGBT plus. You know what I really like in LGBT plus? You must know my joke, this notion of LGBT plus. Because as we know from psychoanalyse, plus is they use it in an empirical way. The idea is, and this I think went wrong with LGBT plus, that it got caught into identity politics, which means—as that’s their story—we have two predominant identities: masculine, feminine. That’s not enough, there are multiple identities. And then they try to bring about the latest official list is already approaching butch, trigender, asexual, bigender, polyamorous, whatever. But then they worry that they worry that maybe there are some other identities that we didn't yet discover so they add the plus. I think we should read plus in a much more radical way. You can be a plus directly, precisely by identifying with the excess, with the surplus. And this is what we in Europe learn the world, sorry for the arrogance, how to do it. Cartesian subject is an plus. It’s something that disturbs—that disturbs identity. And which is why for example with LGBT plus, transgender is a shattering experience. I've spoken with some of them and they are not these beautiful playful transgender people who "ooh, I plastically redefine myself, I shift my identity, today I am a woman, then a man, then trigender, whatever." It's a—it's a very tragic painful position because they bring out the deadlock of sexual difference. I put it in very Hegelian terms at some point: Hegel’s idea is that we you have men, women, and you have transgender, which means the difference as such. A plus as such. Second so again it's crucial not to caught this—and with Me Too, yes. You know what gave me hope? South Korea I was there. They have a wide Me Too movement there. But it's not this story of failed movie stars. It's a mass movement, women protesting, tens of thousands demonstrating this all daily forms which are pretty depressive, how men exploit them. For example, a fashion now lately exploded in South Korea of men putting on Facebook, Instagram, whatever the photos taken of their intimate partners and sharing them and so on. and it's it can be done in a different way. The other thing about identity politics I think that we should raise is a much more dark unpleasant question, I hope you will agree. It's "Yeah, but every identity, social identity at least, has its dark side." And the key point is, "Can we get rid of it? Is it immanent to it?" For example, I wrote books about emancipatory potential of Christianity. I'm not anti-Christian. But isn't it clear, I'm sorry if I repeat my old point, when we read about all these pedophiliac scandals. What shocks me is that you cannot interpret them—two things prevent the common sense interpretation: "Okay, pedophiles are everywhere, of course they are also among the priests." No. First, the numbers; second, the way Church defends them. It's clear that this is part of the what I call obscene subterranean identity of the Church. They are literally a problem of the Church as an institution, it's not just a problem of individuals and so on and so on. And I claim that many of male crimes so-called—and I'm totally opposed to this brutality and so on—we should be attentive to this and I agree here with feminists. They are not simply personal pathology. They for example, in one of my books I report on it, it's a horrible story of which is the city south of El Paso? I always forget, city in across the border in Mexico where you have mass murders in a terrifying way, rape, mass rapes—sorry, Tijuana, yeah, yeah—mass rapes of women and so on. But if you look close at it, you see these are not individual outbursts of pathology, they are ritualized. They are a certain social symbolic form. The mystery is not this male brutality. That's why, to conclude, we should be so careful, my God, about I think this—you know how we fight back so-called patriarchy. For example, I wonder if you agree, to provoke you: I was shocked by this statement—we all know about it—of American Psychological Association which declared toxic masculinity an illness. First, are we aware what they did? Five decades ago it was homosexuality which was medicalized. Now they take masculinity, aggressive, clear social-ideological product, and they medicalize it. And it's a wonderful because friends told me who are part of this process, you know, big companies "Oh, they're already preparing pills against toxic masculinity, it's already part..." But you know where I'm what shocked me there? It's another thing. If you read the description of toxic masculinity, it goes I quote I repeat pretty liberally: that it’s a male attitude of when you are in a difficult situation, instead of reaching out to others, you enclose yourself into yourself and act out aggressively, hurting not only others but maybe even yourself. I'm sorry, I'm just shocked here. In some situations we—we call this and we call this courage. You have to act like this. And the greatest examples that come to me at least in history—and I will name you two examples, one ancient, one ultra-modern—are exactly women. If there was a toxically masculine agent it’s Antigone. Instead of going, "Creon, let's debate" and so on and so on, she stands on her own in a very dogmatic way, and sometimes we need dogmatism. And so at the end we will learn that Antigone is a man or whatever. No, you know what I worry? Here I do a more precise... then they tell me, "Oh but you want to defend men beating women." No, kill them. I’m one of the few persons that I know for death penalty. I don't get a problem with that. I'm just saying that we should be very precise in defining toxic masculinity in this way. They do something very dangerous: they propose a certain much more conformist logic of "don't act too radically, share it with others" and so on and so on as norm. I think it's part of new—it's part of new conformism, conformism and so on, no? So sorry, not to lose time. So what to do when you said it? I think and I agree here with both of you what you hinted at. First what you said, I absolutely agree it. Yeah, you were cutting off my head, no, basically yes for time, yeah. You—I like what you said that the only way even to show respect to Muslims: treat them like responsible adults and debate openly all this with them. For example, one point that makes me explode is this whenever Muslims don’t integrate it’s of course our guilt, we were not open enough towards them. Wait a minute! I read leftist, leftist I repeat it not some crazy a analysis of a friend of mine who went to those—what’s the name—those Brussels suburbs, Islamists. And they said it's a much more complex problem. The paradox is that you last wave of so-called terrorists where they come from? Parents were already much more integrated. And and so I think I would even problematize this. First, why integration? I wouldn't enforce integration of people. Maybe we should learn a certain distance and so on. I hate this liberal multiculturalist idea, "We should all integrate, understand each other." Sorry, I don't understand our myself, how could I understand you? You the only you probably don't understand yourselves, Islamists don't. The only thing I believe in—and here I'm an authentic multiculturalist—is that to understand an ethnic group, maybe even a person, you must estrange, you must acquire a distance. Almost all great writers did this. Look, Joyce wrote the greatest novel about Ireland. Ha! From Trieste and then Zurich. Beckett. Ha-ha! He even changed his language and did it in French and so on. I think that even you mentioned Borges, Argentina. An Argentinian friend told me that you know this Argentinian identity, Pampas and so on, all that? It’s produced by English British travelers around and then Argentinians when they got rid of the Spain domination, they identified with this foreign view you know. So, okay, to cut it short, my answer to you is: the catastrophe, I agree with you, on this pessimist list. Let's go to the end, my God. Right-wing populists today where they're in power are the only ones who dare to openly refer to the working class, and not just rhetorically. Even look what Kaczynski government—a nightmare—did in Poland: lowered retirement, better... so it’s we are in this crazy situation where right-wing populists are the only ones who dare to do old social democratic measures in a limited amount, while obviously the case of Greece demonstrates that if you want a perfect austerity program, the best thing is to have left in power and so on. And I agree just to now I'm really at the end, believe me or not, I think that the problem with the left is I think this is the we live in the negative legacy of '68, which brought about this culturalization as it were of leftist politics. I noticed how systematically social problems, political problems are culturalized. You know like we have racism, oh, you do a kind of a totally fake psychoanalysis: it means we are not open enough to the others, we project our traumas into the others and so on and so on. And this brings me to one of the most stupid statements. I almost become Goebbels here and say let’s burn books where they claim this, which is—it's really like I'm speaking like it's like I feel now like a—like a vampire swallowing garlic, you know, that an enemy is somebody whom we were not ready to listen, to hear his story. Ah, nice to hear this. So Hitler was our enemy because we didn't... No, we have to accept it! There are real enemies out there. It may be Islamists, it may be our fundamentalists and so on and so on. The left should stop this attitude of, "We are only our own enemies whenever we project something into an enemy" and so on and so on. So I think, I agree with you and with both of you, we should critically analyze this, let's call it cultural turn of the left. I think this is almost I would say the—the origin of the catastrophe. And you pointed out something very important: the extent to which although beneath surface, for example, political correctness in United States—I'm shocked to find this again and again—has a class dimension, although they would not admit it. But it's enlightened intellectual classes' way to dismiss ordinary people who still mistreat their wives and so on. You have absolutely cannot understand resistance against political correctness without the class dimension and that's what Donald Trump used in a masterful way. So as Winnetou said there in—"Ich habe gesprochen," so Howgh. Sorry for talking too much. While I was giving my great speech, what is your private flirting or there with what was going on there, you know this? This is my official communication with the organizer, my agent Alexandra Ötzelinger. This is purely official and we have to respect certain time limits here. Don't tell me this. This is the old most disgusting leftist strategy when they get tired and don't want debate to go on, just "You can go even one step lower and, you know, my left like to evoke, 'We could go on but there are cleaning ladies who want to go on earlier,' you know. All excuses come right just to cut the debate, you know." Slavoj, you have the privilege for a last word. I will say something which is not very typical for me, I will be very I'm there are many points where we agree I would say I totally agree with you that the '70s the situation was totally different. Just compare the spirit of that time, sexual liberation, with today's political correctness and you see an incredible difference. But I want to finish really with one Satz. Nonetheless we shouldn't forget politics and I propose a slogan to you, very clumsy, for your party like: *Mit Peter schöner Wetter für Österreich*. So, all the luck at the European elections, please. Yes, Slavoj, but please, Slavoj, I think this merits an answer. Do you have your microphone? I have it, yes. Yes, did you get the yes. I see, but you know my problem is this one. Look at—how do you call Gilet Jaunes—Yellow Vests in France, Gelbwesten. Yes, this is exactly the limit of links. They did exactly this, local rebellion and so on and so on, and they got support from Salvini and from—from Salvini and and from Trump and so on and so on. I—and I had long debates with this and even my friend with whom I have differences but basically I support him, Varoufakis, admitted this. The big mistake, no mistake, Greek fiasco shows the limit of this idea we can resist it through strong national government and so on and so on. Second thing, I doubt that it's really that those who are most immobilisiert are those who suffer today. First, I don't know what's the situation here in Österreich. But in Slovenien, the big problem are precisely those overmobile young people. In Slovenien, in younger generation till years, it's almost around if not more of people who have precarious jobs. And this means in today's situation also very mobile. They—they go to—to Austria, to Germany to get temporary jobs and so on and so on. So I of course and the limit also of this local approach is for me Spain. You see Podemos, yes, wonderful, their big ideology was listen to ordinary people, to their complaints and so on and so on. Well, in today's Europe, as you hinted up correctly—because okay, ideological manipulation whatever but nonetheless—if you listen to ordinary people and to their complaints where? You will certainly get a very strong anti-immigrant message, you know. So what I'm saying is that why do I mention very briefly Podemos? Because yes, their ideology was this, their leader Iglesias said once even in consciously provocative way, vulgar words, "Fuck left and right, fuck everything, ordinary people have their problems, listen to them." Yes, we should listen to their problems. We will not get answers from them. That's why the struggle is so—the struggle is so difficult. I'm just saying that—that if we just focus on this, you will this type of resistance, local... look, what will be the result of Yellow Vests or of Brexit, which also had strong support? I can predict it with absolute certainty. If United Kingdom does Brexit, it will be even more brutally exposed without minimal protection to international capital and so on and so on. Problems are real. I don't believe in ordinary people's wisdom, listen. No, they have problems, and this they are no worse and no better than us. They are confused like we are and so on and so on. You know, that's for me the problem of this. Look at Podemos again: in the last elections, when they had to propose a kind of a program, it was what? It was a very moderate social democracy and so on. It was nothing. But I must be sympathetic to them: the reason they are now in decay is also because quite heroically, they remain open towards Catalonia independence. They were not for it but they didn't want to condemn it. They play an honorable game there. But again, this is for me the problem. Yes, you should of course mobilize people on their own concerns. But wait a minute, these concerns are not specific to them. Why not—and why not think about building this kind of lateral international links, you know?
I really don’t want to talk too long because the partners are so interesting. I will try to make it as short as possible to open up the debate. And I wasn’t aware of this in advance, but I like what I was told now half an hour ago, this shift towards why Europe today. Because it’s so fashionable among many enlightened leftists in Europe to play this masochist game of so-called anti-Eurocentrismus. You know, like whatever happens in the Third World—I remember, maybe you remember it some years ago, for example, Rwanda war—all my radical leftist friends told me, "Oh, it must be an after-effect of European imperialism and neocolonialism and so on and so on." No, I think that in today's world, if we see where things are going, and after—let's face it—the fiasco of Latino American leftist populism, Europe—of course, not the existing simply Europe in Brussels and so on, but I'm an unashamed idealist here—I will say the idea of Europe in the Hegelian sense of this term is still, I'm sorry to tell you, not only the best thing, but maybe even the only thing that we have. What do you mean by this? It may sound a crazy thing for a leftist to say. Where do we stand today? It's fashionable to say by critics of communism that whatever you say about communism, not only was it a humanitarian catastrophe but economically it doesn't work. Unfortunately, we have today a case of Communist Party in power which economically not only it works, but it created the only genuine economic miracle of the last decades. Are you aware what China achieved in the last decades? Forget about British Industrialisierung or whatever. I don't think there was ever in the history of humanity such a creation of new wealth. They lifted out of poverty million people. Such an economic boom as China did it. Now you will say, I know, I suspect that I know, "Yes, because they allowed capitalism." That's not enough. I spoke with a person who was—I don't want to put him into trouble, so I will not tell his name—close to the daughter of Deng Xiaoping. And he told me that just after the death of Mao Zedong, he spoke with her, the daughter, who was, you know, when Deng Xiaoping was dying he was barely able to speak and she was the only one who was able like to follow. And she said that when Deng Xiaoping was dying, some high Nomenklatura members came to him and asked him this kissing the ass question like, "What is the greatest thing you did?" Everybody expected he will say "opening up China." He said, "No. That I resisted at that point, with economic reforms, also full Western democracy. That I said no, stop, the party has to remain in power." And I think, unfortunately—I'm not praising, I don't think we should become like China—I think that unfortunately he was right. The successful formula is precisely new authoritarian capitalism. It’s another form of what you quoted with Nancy Fraser, this—but this time is not progressive—authoritarian neoliberalism. Economically, full participation in the free world market; politically, an authoritarian regime. My right-wing friend—but who is not an idiot—Peter Sloterdijk said, asked an interesting question: if years from now they will be building monuments around the world, to which person they will build it from our epoch? Sloterdijk’s answer is Lee Kuan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, who invented this formula of very successful economically capitalist but authoritarian regime. And so what's the achievement of China? And I think China is even our main danger, to avoid the idea that I'm praising China. The left in the 20th century hated mostly, if I simplify it a little bit, two things: on the one hand this pure, brutal, unbridled liberal capitalism and at the same time a strong authoritarian state. What China did is to combine the two in an extremely successful way. And are we aware of the irony of what goes in China? The most dangerous profession—forget about you can be for capitalism, even for Western ideas, they tolerate it—the really dangerous thing today in China is to be a Marxist obsessed with ecological concerns. Then, you know that they are now serially arresting Marxist students there and so on and so on. So I am not—first, I don't want to stigmatize China. Often we project things onto China, but we are already doing them in a more subtle way. For example, you know that in China you already have this form of digital control and it's developing in such a fast way that ideally—but they are almost there—every citizen has its in the state of course computers his, her, their, let’s say identity, where his good points, bad points are noticed. For example, if you are convicted of something, if you engage in dissident activity, you lose points or blah-blah-blah. And this had very concrete consequences. I read somewhere these are official statistics that in million people were prohibited buying fast train tickets and plane tickets because their patriotic standard or whatever was too low. Now my point is what? It’s easy to make fun of this, "Yeah, yeah, China, primitive Orientals." We—if there is something to learn from all this Google, Cambridge Analytica and so on, problem is that we are doing the same things. Thing. And the big problem is what to do against this tendency, this new authoritarian capitalism. In India it's the same, Narendra Modi, in—this combination of economically successful capitalism with authoritarian, usually religiously or ethnically nationalist ideology dominating. And we are there. Did you read what happened a couple of days ago in Poland, in a northern city? I'm not saying it's a central event, but it's a clear sign. There was the first after the good old—I mean it ironically—Nazi times, public burning of the books. Local Catholic priests brought on a market in front of a church a big package of books, some Harry Potter novels and so on, and they burned them publicly. And media just took notice of it and so on and so on. That’s where we are. So, quickly not to lose time, I'm sorry. That we should ask ourselves—such a schizophrenic state, Nietzsche ideology, ideology. Today, I think, far from the idea that we live in a post-ideological state, ideology is stronger than ever. What type of ideology? I would like to take as a starting point Marx’s old Marxist notion of religion as opium of the people, not for the people. For the people is a naive enlightenment idea that there are secret priests who produce opium and so on. No, and although we still have religion as the opium for the people—different forms of fundamentalism, Muslim, Hindu, Christian and so on—there are three other opiums today that we should fight. Sorry, yes, opium so to be build. Another one is expertise. Are we aware in many economic debates how expert knowledge is fetishized? It’s simply referred to as "economists said this," "experts said this," and it’s mostly bullshit. I will give you an extremely simple example. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made now this Green Book proposal—sorry, Green proposal—where the idea is to spend a lot of money, tremendous amounts, for ecology. And economic experts immediately predicted, "This is madness, you cannot spend money like that." I'm sorry, but from my totally naive standpoint I'm saying, if historical experience shows something, is that you can do it. And if you do it in the right way, it works extremely well even economically. How did—what was the thing that drew United States out of the crisis finally? It was World War Two, with incredible spending, just empty spending in the sense that it was not immediately productive, it was just you spend it for arms. Didn’t Reagan do the same? And Trump is doing today the same. So we have expert knowledge that we should distrust, at least certain type of. But now comes my big point, of course. I think we have two other very important opiums of the people, which are—if you know dialectical spirit, you will not be surprised by my answer—opium and the people. First, opium. Are you aware what role—and opium is here for me a condensation for from simple sleeping pills, antidepressants to real opium. According to some analysis in United States, about of people who work in academia, professors, students, are already on Xanax or some type of drugs and so on and so on. So it’s this opium. Then I think "people" as the opium of the people. Of the opium of the people. That’s why, I'm sorry she is not here we could debate it, that's why I'm skeptical about the formula of promoted by Chantal Mouffe of links populismus. She says it works. Well, my first answer is "Sorry, where does it work? In Venezuela or where?" I mean, the only regime where leftist government did it relatively well is in Bolivia. They're much more moderate. I know vice president is sort of my friend, Álvaro García Linera. They are much more cautious, they do a good job. The problem with populism for me is that first, it’s usually associated with stronger nation state. The idea is, the enemy is international capital, the way to fight it is stronger nation state, which then could allow us to pass more workers' protection laws and so on and so on and so on. I don't think this works, if you ask me. I think that the only way to fight international capital is with new internationalism. And I think that precisely issues that we are confronting today—ecological crisis, new forms of digital control and so on—all ask, demand a new form of internationalism. So that I don't speak too long, just let me then go quickly through what are the problems that I see today. First, it’s of course ecology, ecological problems. And I think if you just do a kind of a spectral analysis of different ideologies associated with ecology, first one is the Donald Trump ideology. You ignore the problem, "Oh, it's a pseudo-problem invented by some crazy leftists who want to destroy American way of life." Okay, no, we shouldn't lose time with that. The second one is leave it to market forces. You know, we should just do taxation and so on. I think problems are too serious to leave it to that. The third way to deal with it is trust in science. Don't worry, soon there will be fusion, clear—clear source of energy and so on and so on, science will take care of it. I also don't trust this one. Now we come to ideology, ideology proper. The most dangerous almost—no, okay, there is one which is not so dangerous but I find maybe most disgusting—this basically conservative idea, and even many deep leftist, deep ecologists accept it. The idea is, we offended Mother Earth, we ruined the natural balance, the source of trouble is human hubris. So, we should limit ourselves to our proper place in nature and so on and so on. I absolutely reject this approach, not because I'm not such a pessimist, because I'm more of a pessimist. Very many—one friend of mine, an intelligent ecologist, wrote a book called *Ecology Without Nature*, claiming that if we want to be really a radical ecologist, you cannot elevate nature into a kind of a substantial Mother, natural rhythm, balance, to which we should return, which should set standards. Listen, think just about our sources of energy: oil, coal. Can you even imagine what kind of mega ecological catastrophes happened on our earth well before humankind was here? If nature is our Mother, it's a deep bitch of a dirty Mother, to put it like this. And you see, this doesn't mean "Oh, we can do anything." No, it means there is no simple way back to some natural balance. But the real danger, I think, is a certain everyday ecology propagated by media, by big companies and so on. The logic is this one, and that's Alltagsideologie, everyday ideology at its purest. They say, "But who are you just to criticize the state, to blame others? Did you do your duty? You think you are pure." Like when I had the debate with a writer called, it’s a beautiful name, Will Self, in London. He pathetically appealed to the people in the hall and said, "Show me, don't you have iPhones? Do you know that they all use coltan or what, a mineral, and so on and so on," like we should all be guilty. That's one side of the story, and then comes the moralizing. Then they say, "Did you do your duty? Did you separate all Coca-Cola cans? Did you put all the newspaper," you know, this is ideology because it makes you personally responsible with a clear message: "Don’t criticize society. Do your proper job," and then always at the same time it offers you an easy way out like "recycle, separate and you can basically," the message is, "you can go on being a consumerist that you are." I think that ecology is a serious problem, why? Because it is absolutely clear from what sciences—and I don't want to fetishize experts, I know how little we know about the logic of global warming, whatever we call it—but that you cannot regulate it simply through the market. A transnational coordinated action—once we called this some version of communism—will be necessary. A friend of mine, excellent theorist of catastrophes, Jean-Pierre Dupuy, D-U-P-U-Y, told me that he was in Fukushima part of some European delegation three days after that tsunami, and that he knows firsthand there that for a couple of hours Japanese government was in a total panic because they thought that they will have to evacuate the entire Tokyo area, million people. And we will confront such situation. Who will do it, in what way? Now I will say something very problematic. I think that we cannot simply say "let the people speak," we should open ourselves to the people. This is for me a more refined but no less dangerous form of populism. This is one of the remainders of Maoism that I don't like. I respect ordinary people—no, this is even too patronizing to say. But don't elevate them into some kind of ordinary source of wisdom so that we corrupted intellectuals, whatever—no, talk with ordinary people, you will discover their worries, their anxieties, but you will not get any deep message what to do from them. We have to reinvent. Even democracy in this immediate sense, "let's ask the people," doesn't do the job. Second danger, I already mentioned it, digitalization of our lives. It's not only the total control. The old police state was rather naive, you know. You were small dissident, yes, and you turned your head quickly, you saw three Stasi agents following you, whatever, and there were limits to this. I mean, you cannot have all people controlled like this. With today's strong computer, you can do it. We can all have individual files, everybody can do it. But what I fear more is some is the—is this idea of the popular term by of Elon Musk is now Neuralink, wired brain. The direct contact of our brain with a computer and in this way we can share experiences, direct mind-to-mind contact and so on and so on. It's not science fiction. At a certain still modest level, it's already happening. I think this is a tremendous danger. New ways of how we will be controlled without even knowing that we are controlled. Let me amuse you with a story which already you know, but it’s for me a kind of a symbol. I have very many weird friends, one of them is making this type of experiments of controlling human minds, digitalizing them. And he told me a terrifying story. They already know how to control rat, the disgusting small animal, no? So that they already can do it so that you wire their nerves—the rat’s nerves—and by a computer, to cut a long story short, you have a box, you press the button and you control the nerves which direct the rat running around. I saw a video. You press a button and then rat becomes a remote-controlled car, you can steer it around. Now my friends are very evil in a progressive sense. They said, "Let's try the same with humans." They are afraid to go with this in public. And the result is pretty sad. Which result? They asked themselves the right question. If you are controlled in this way—it’s still very elementary, but it's progressing—how will you experience? Let's say I walk here as a nervous idiot that I am, around, and then you, Robert, the evil guy here, you press the button, you control. Will it be, "Oh my God, some foreign force is controlling me?" No, the first results are horrible. I will still think that I act freely. And this is, I think, the new type of control that we are confronting today. The most dangerous freedom is the freedom that you don't even experience as—I’m sorry, is unfreedom that you don't even experience as a limitation of your freedom. You think you are totally free, you surf the internet, buy things, whatever, everything is registered, you are subtly controlled and so on and so on. And now to conclude, I'm approaching the end, back to the third problem that I see: Flüchtlinge, refugees, immigrants, Europe and so on. The ideological hypocrisy in this field, I find it staggering. And I know how problematic is what I'm saying because I was called by right-wingers that my aim is to destroy Western culture, I was called by leftists of being a philosopher of Alternative für Deutschland and so on. I am neither, I am just like you, extremely worried about the rise of rightist populism. And as my friend Robert already emphasized, we should ask here deeper questions. One way to confront this problem is to play the wall game, Donald Trump game. It's mess out there, we are not part of it, so if we feel threatened let's build walls. This of course doesn't work. Why not? For the obvious reasons that today we live in one world. We are all part of it. Look where do refugees come from, many of them—Iraq, Syria. This is not their immanent for because of inner tensions war. The mega mistake was attack on American attack on Iraq, and it's such a beautiful piece of irony—did you notice it?—that precisely, you know, this was a nice moment of European politics when United States announced their plan to attack Iraq. You remember, this was a moment of glory of West Germany and France nonetheless. With many other West European powers, they opposed it. While the Visegrád post-communist government, they supported it, which is why they were celebrated by Donald Rumsfeld as the "New Europe" and so on and so on. And but isn't it a beautiful irony that they are now, although they participated in the process which triggered refugees, they are now the main opponents of bringing in refugees and so on and so on? I think the main danger with Flüchtlinge is again humanitarianism. No, no, no, I am all for helping them, don't—but this idea of perceiving it as a humanitarian problems: there are refugees there, what do we do, are we human or not, do we help them or not and so on and so on. What's my problem here? That if you act like this, you are destined to lose it. You act against the consequence. The first thing to do is to act—I don't like the work preemptively, but—to ask ourselves, how do we, developed West, participate in the processes which create refugees? For example, Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a key factor in the Syrian war. Saudi Arabia should be isolated or whatever. Or for me, for example, this is for me a mega scandal: there are many refugees in Middle East, Arab and other countries. But only in the poor countries. That rich series of countries—Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, let's name them, Bahrain, Qatar, Emirates—they simply don't take refugees and so on. So there is—and there are this would be one so problem for me. It this the other solution, this leftist humanitarian one: we are guilty, Europeans, so let's just open the borders, everybody can come in and so on and so on. Thanks, then you will have in years all Europe in the hands of populists, and then they will be doing what all Marxists always like to do. The best Marxist books are always reports on the failure, you know, very convincing books on why things went wrong, why Hitler had to win in Germany, why Stalin had to win in Soviet Union and so on and so on. I think that that again what we have to do is, for example, in Africa where also many refugees are coming, don't change it into a humanitarian problem. Ask yourself, how do we, developed West, participate in the process which is causing refugees? Look at for me one of the nightmarish places of the earth, Democratic Republic of Congo, which is a state-run so-called rogue state, central government doesn't function, local warlords operate there, but as such it’s fully integrated into global capitalism. What about that? What about another fact not written a lot about? That here we Europeans and Americans are not guilty, it’s mostly Arab countries and some Asian countries like South Korea, Japan and others. They are massively buying the best arable land in many poor Arab countries, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Madagascar and so on, growing mostly industrial plants for export and so on and so on. We should shift the terrain to this level. The last thing with refugees, I think that again we should step out of this deadlock where on the one hand there are anti-immigrant racist, we should absolutely clearly reject them, populists. But the right answer to them is not "No, there are no problems with immigrants." Of course there are problems, not because they are bad or we are bad, but there is a certain incompatibility of ways of life. I don't—I don't blame anyone here, but if we will not talk openly about these problems, I remember then we are lost. I remember a couple of years ago there was a big scandal but it was downplayed by the left in England. It happened in the Mid-British city, people, Rotherham. It was admitted even by left-liberal media like Guardian that it was a nightmare. What happened there was that they discovered that a Pakistani youth gang serially, systematically raped for years over young white, but very well selected, from poor families girls. And parents of these girls tried to—tried to—tried to mobilize police. Police said, "No, no, no, if we investigate this, we will be accused of Islamophobia" and so on and so on. I think this is not respect for Islam. This is treating them, as you put it, in a paternalist way. It's explosively dangerous, that's how you create votes for the new right and so on and so on. We simply have to talk openly about all these problems. Also, anti-Semitism in Europe. Something extremely dangerous is emerging recently, what I call Zionist anti-Semitism. And its father is, I am not kidding here, Reinhard Heydrich. That guy who wrote in '36, "We wish Jewish people all the best." You find the quote in two-three times in my books. "But not here. Go to Palestine, we will support you there, just not here. Let's not mix." And that's the formula of all today's right-wingers. Breivik, the Norwegian guy who killed young socialists, he wrote in his manifesto, "Jews, we should absolutely support them there as a wall against Islamists, but we don't need them here." And unfortunately the Israeli government is playing these games. I remember when half a year ago Netanyahu called to French Jews to come to Israel because there is anti-Semitism in France, the French anti-Semitic right enthusiastically greeted this, "Yeah, yeah, we agree with him, go—go to Israel, just not here." So you know what should be our position here? Not the naive one, "There is no anti-Semitism in Europe, it's only Islamophobic fantasy" and so on. There is, but it's a naive moralist stance but it's the only realist one for me. It's that the fight against anti-Semitism here and the fight against what Israel is doing on the West Bank are two sides of exactly the same struggle. You know, we should reject this victimizing logic from both sides. We should reject when Arabs say, "Okay, we are a little bit anti-Semitic but what Israel is doing now to us it's the same thing that Jews suffered in the World War Two," or exactly the same thing is done by aggressive Zionists who say basically that after we suffered so much in the Holocaust who has the right to reproach us for anything and so on and so on. It's so important to be universalist today. So now to conclude really, I think that the only—now I was just a pessimist, I in a wild improvisation enumerated these different problems we are faced with—we need not the existing Europe the way it is, Brussels bureaucracy and so on and so on, although even there I wouldn't agree that it's all just bad. I had a debate with an English friend who said a Brussels bureaucracy is international capital and so on and so on. So I asked another friend something very interesting: to bring me the list of all the conflicts between British government and Brussels bureaucracy in the last years. Sorry, almost in all the cases I'm on the side of Brussels. For example, I remember in Tony Blair years, there was a Brussels directive of maximum work weeks for—sorry, work hours for week, to prevent workers being exploited too much. Blair government protested, "It will limit our competitiveness." Then some ecological standard Europe tried to impose. Again British government protested and so on and so on. So even although it's not so bad, I still think that what we need desperately today to fight all these problems—like who will control these new modes of digital control, Neuralink and so on, who will con—you—it cannot be—it cannot be left to private companies, it also cannot be simply left to the political structure that we have today. We need new forms of, I call it naively, democratic mobilization which should be at least in the beginning pan-European. We have to step beyond national borders. We need international co—we need international cooperation. And I don't worry too much. It may look that we are lost and as you Peter told me, agree with—it—there is a certain projection that loss is already our fate. And we shouldn't fight it by saying, "No, the situation is not so bad" and so on and so on. We should confront the crisis. If things—we, enlightened Europeans—and I am not ashamed of this term, I hate this idea of, "Europe is the source of all evil" and so on and so on. Sorry, but even those who criticize Eurocentrism usually do it by strictly relying on emancipatory rhetoric developed as part of European enlightenment and so on and so on. So what I'm saying is that Europe has to offer something to the world, my God. The entire emancipatory tradition of modern times from feminism to workers' rights, healthcare and so on and so on is something that is strictly part of the European legacy. Now I'll say another aggressive thing: I don't buy that bullshit that, "Yes, but pre-modern societies have role of women important." Look at it closely. First, it’s mostly ideology. I love it, I read a report on a in New Guinea I think of a tribe which was officially matriarchal, "Ooh, feminine divinity," even like their village looked like this: the central sacred place was even formed like—like a vagina, you know, like... Okay, only one problem: only men had access to that to that place, you know. No, I mean, femin—I warn feminists not to fall into this Jungian, referring to Carl Gustav Jung, topic of, "We Europeans emphasized too much the masculine principle, we should return to some feminine principle" and so on. No, I proudly reclaim Cartesian talking about Descartes tradition. Do you know, it’s a thing that I don't think many of you know, you know who were the first modern in theory feminists? Ah, this is not yet known because we are so much hypnotized by this idea, "Bad Descartes, rational imperialism." Women followers of Descartes—okay, mostly rich of course, educated French women—asked why, they said because cogito doesn't have a sex. It—it opens up a space. I quote in my book precise sources of this first Cartesian fem—because this is modern feminism. It's not, "Oh, balance, we have more to emphasize feminine element" and so on and so on. It's to accept the radical ultimate contingency of your sexual of your sexual identity. So to conclude where do I see—so that I don't get lost, yes, sorry—on the one hand, you know, it's a subtle logic of fate. We shouldn't say, "It’s not so bad, we may have a chance." It is very bad. And if the scenario goes on, it’s a catastrophe. But, and here comes what we should learn from history. Hegel saw this very well. Look, Protestants believe in predestination. It’s fate. But there is a wonderful contradiction written in the very core of Protestantism. You would have thought that if there is predestination I stay at home and masturbate and watch pornography like it's all decided. No, precisely by this belief in fate, Protestantism grounded an extremely active attitude. And even you find traces of this even in Stalinism. This is the only good thing that I can say about Stalinism. They were determinist, necessity of communism, but at the same time they demanded extreme mobilization as if—if we are not active—this means that we should read predestination in a much more intelligent way, many intelligent Protestant theologians knew it. Predestination is our fate, but we—we can change in some sense the fate itself if you accept it as fate and counteract it. We can—we can do it. There is an opening, there is an opening. There is an opening, there is an opening there. And again I think that where we are fighting for Europe today, for the idea of Europe, and don't tell me this idea is an illusion. It’s an illusion which still mobilizes people. That's why what gives me hope for Europe is that my God, all the bad guys today hate Europe. There is no Putin, Trump—Trump is now sending—okay, not literally, he's in bad relations with him, but you know what Steve Bannon did now? I was there, they showed the building to me. He opened a school in Rome to educate right-wing populist how to bring disunity to Europe. Trump or Putin—Putin supports everyone just that it ruins European unity. It can be Catalonia, it can be Brexit, name it, and so on and so on. Why? Why is Europe such a thorn? It’s not just because it’s still a global power. The idea of Europe still stands for something that is traumatic, problematic in today's universe with this tendency towards authoritarian capitalism. Europe doesn't fit this model. That’s why I think we should remain proud Europeans. We should get rid—yes, we did horrible things, but okay, everybody did them. But we should resist this temptation of European masochism. You know, our main task is to be anti-Eurocentric and so on and so on. No, we should say, "Sorry, there are great things which are the European legacy." They are threatened today. And yes, we should criticize Europe. But be a little bit of a philosopher and look at how the very instruments, conceptual, theoretical notions, that we use to criticize Europe are strictly part of European legacy. And in India, when I was two years ago, they conceded this to me. You know, today's neocolonial power, they work very well, they love it when you have a nation which claims we should rediscover our old traditions and so on and so on. But look at India. Indian independence was effectively not enacted through return to some ancient traditions. It was to be very brutal, young, rich Indian liberals educated in Oxford, Cambridge and so on and so on. Honest Indians admit it today that the true father of independence, what is good in India, it’s not Gandhi, it's Ambedkar, who was an extremely crucial figure—let's not get lost there. What I'm just saying is this thing, to conclude really now, I'm sorry. Look, what how we should act, learn from the enemy. By "disorder under heaven," I of course meant that famous Mao Zedong statement—I’m very critical of Mao Zedong, but I’m in love still with that statement—"There is great disorder under heaven, so the situation is excellent." Okay, it’s not so excellent, just remember, don't lose nerves, that what figures like Trump and so on mean is that the hegemony of the existing order is breaking up. We live in confused times. We no longer have, as we had till recently, for example, in the United States—forget about Democrats, Republicans—but they shared a whole set of presuppositions, you know, and that hegemony is broken. And we should not lose nerves here but act. Take this insofar as we can as an opportunity. An example I promise to you, Robert, don't kill me, to be the last. You know, leftists were so shocked when Trump proclaimed emergency, national emergency, for a couple of thousand immigrants. Incidentally, you know what's my cynical reaction here? Does Trump at all believe in the greatness of America? I mean, is America really so weak that a couple of thousand of immigrants can destroy it and so on? I think the time for progressive Americans is not to say, "Trump is aggressively patriotic," but Trump is—isn't it much more effective strategy? Trump doesn't believe in American greatness, he is anti-patriotic and so on. That—and some intelligent right-wingers were shocked by that measure of Trump. And they said precisely their fear was right. They said Trump set a horrible precedent. What if the next president, maybe, maybe not, I don't know, will be a more than ever left-leaning Democrat? What if he proclaims green national emergency? Trump said, "You know, this is how we should act." Don't lose nerves. Enemy did something horrible, not just protest it, ask yourself, "Can we use it? Can we turn it?" This is the time for people to act. Not to look nostalgically at the old time of European—of European on American hegemony, but... I will conclude with a conservative—not another story, that’s what—conservative British poet who used, I often quote it, a nice metaphor in his very conservative book, T.S. Eliot, *On the Idea of a Christian Society*. He said sometimes only a radical heresy can save what is worth saving in a religion. Today, only a radical green-left heresy can change the idea of Europe. That’s our duty. Vielen Dank. Thank you. I’m sorry, I talked a little bit too long, but as you know, Robert, we should fight this metaphysical linear notion of time as measured by machines and so on. Thank you. The big difference between Stalinism and fascism is that after a leader gives a speech, in fascism the leader receives the applause. In Stalinism, the leader stands up and applauds himself, no? I will nonetheless to follow the second tradition. Okay, so I—I think, I'm almost afraid that where is blood between us, we seem to move in the same direction, so I will just if you permit me, I hope you know where I see—it’s not that universalism does not mean, "Oh, we are all together one big family." I hate this what I call UNESCO universalism. You know, those disgusting books published decades by—go on world culture and "Every culture is beautiful in its own way." No, every culture is horrible in its own way. Every culture has, how do you say, bodies, dead bodies in its closet. So I will tell you my experience which I think at least conceptually shows the way. Derrida, among others, told me this wonderful old—no, he—he uses it somewhere, but it’s circulating in my—this wonderful Jewish joke, which I think applies ideally—I will try to answer you what is false universalism—applies ideally to and precisely about this nowhere, you know, we are nowhere—to our situation. I'm sorry if you know the joke. It's that in a—in a synagogue, Saturday or whenever, Jewish believers meet and first the rabbi says in this self-humiliating way, "Oh my God, I am nobody, I betrayed you, I am not worth of your attention, I'm a nobody, ah-ah." Then a rich Jewish merchant stands up and said, "Oh my God, I am a nobody also, all my wealth is nothing, blah-blah-blah." Then a poor Jew stands up and says, "Uh-uh, my God, I am also a nobody." And then the rich—it doesn't matter who, one of the two rich ones—stabs the other and says, "But who is this guy? He just thinks that he can be a nobody like us or whatever," you know. I had exactly the same experience in a debate in Vereinigte Staaten where it was about multiculturalism and so on. And I warn you, there are now many very intelligent black theorists, they don't buy this bullshit identity politics, whatever, they are very intelligent, some of them even Hegelians, that. And one of them told me this experience. I was there—you know it was this multiculturalist and this white liberals, one after the other said, "Ooh, Eurocentrism, we are responsible to, we are responsible of everything, we are bad, we cannot be blah-blah-blah." And then he told me that he stood up and said, "In your spirit, but wait a minute, we also have our Muslim fundamentalists, you know, Louis Farrakhan and so on. We also have," and literally they look—the white liberal—like, "Wait a minute. No, no, you also want to be nothing? No, sorry. We are the ones who only can be." In other words, this—here I speak a little bit as not practicing psychoanalytiker, because you know, once it happens to me from time to time that when I give some class a student comes to me and says, "Can I go into analysis with you?" and my answer is always the same: "If you want this, you must really be in trouble, you know, with all my nervous tics and so on, you in never." Okay, so but nonetheless I would like to Begrif zu verwenden to apply this notion of Mehrgenuss, surplus. It you should al—when somebody humiliates himself too much, you should always ask what's their secret profit, you know. And their profit is clear: precisely by humiliating themselves—you find this so clear with this multi—these people of nowhere as you would have put it—they apparently humiliate themselves, "We are nowhere, blah-blah-guilty of everything." But this gives them a tremendous—I witness this almost on a daily basis in political debates—privilege. As such as nobodies, they think they have a monopoly on judging the others. I remember, I had a wonderful debate, I'm sorry if you know the story, in Missoula, Montana, with some native Americans. They don't like the name and I don't. You know my old joke: they one of them told me, "I much prefer to be called Indian. At least my name is a monument to white man’s stupidity who thought they were in India." They immediately see this trap: native American, "Ah, so we are nature, you are cultural American or what?" So how this apparent self-humiliation reserves to you this position of zero point, you are above all particular identities, you are... So the black guy then taught me, and I repeat this all the time, that the struggle should be for universality itself. Every white liberal loves it when black people want "uh, African roots, our identity, our ancient wisdom." No, the true danger—but in a good sense, for us good—is blacks who say, "No, your white people’s universality is not yet truly universal. We must be," to put it like this, "better Europeans than you." That's why I always celebrate for example, I always almost cry when I read about Haiti revolution. It's a most beautiful—every leftist should cry. You know, when black slaves rebelled there, Napoleon sent an army. And all honor goes here to Jacobins who immediately recognized Toussaint Louverture. Napoleon sent an army, killed them all. And then the French army approached the slave army and they thought they hear they heard some songs from the black army, and they thought it must be some primitive African tribal songs. And they got shocked when they approached it. You know what the black army was singing? Marseillaise. And all honor goes here, because I didn't say many good thing, to Polish regiment who change sides. Said, "Oh sorry, maybe we are on the wrong fighting on the—" You see the true struggle should be every position, even the most particular, has a certain notion of universality in it. It and we should fight so the the answer I agree with you is what was wrong in our universality so that we left out and to ordinary people it appeared that they had to protect their particularity and so on and so on and not to avoid this topic that you hinted at this feminist LGBT polemics and so on. I'm absolutely for LGBT plus, for Me Too and so on. But you know who are my ideals there? Remember this name, check it on internet: Tarana Burke, B-U-R-K-A. It's a black lady who really started Me Too before it became fashionable. And she wrote a public letter which was typically ignored. She started it as a mass movement of exploited woman sharing their experience and she is horrified at what became out of it. Instead of the focus of ordinary women, it became almost—I am ironic here, of course—a medium for failed actresses, "Sorry I was raped by that producer" and so on and so on. The same is with LGBT plus. You know what I really like in LGBT plus? You must know my joke, this notion of LGBT plus. Because as we know from psychoanalyse, plus is they use it in an empirical way. The idea is, and this I think went wrong with LGBT plus, that it got caught into identity politics, which means—as that’s their story—we have two predominant identities: masculine, feminine. That’s not enough, there are multiple identities. And then they try to bring about the latest official list is already approaching butch, trigender, asexual, bigender, polyamorous, whatever. But then they worry that they worry that maybe there are some other identities that we didn't yet discover so they add the plus. I think we should read plus in a much more radical way. You can be a plus directly, precisely by identifying with the excess, with the surplus. And this is what we in Europe learn the world, sorry for the arrogance, how to do it. Cartesian subject is an plus. It’s something that disturbs—that disturbs identity. And which is why for example with LGBT plus, transgender is a shattering experience. I've spoken with some of them and they are not these beautiful playful transgender people who "ooh, I plastically redefine myself, I shift my identity, today I am a woman, then a man, then trigender, whatever." It's a—it's a very tragic painful position because they bring out the deadlock of sexual difference. I put it in very Hegelian terms at some point: Hegel’s idea is that we you have men, women, and you have transgender, which means the difference as such. A plus as such. Second so again it's crucial not to caught this—and with Me Too, yes. You know what gave me hope? South Korea I was there. They have a wide Me Too movement there. But it's not this story of failed movie stars. It's a mass movement, women protesting, tens of thousands demonstrating this all daily forms which are pretty depressive, how men exploit them. For example, a fashion now lately exploded in South Korea of men putting on Facebook, Instagram, whatever the photos taken of their intimate partners and sharing them and so on. and it's it can be done in a different way. The other thing about identity politics I think that we should raise is a much more dark unpleasant question, I hope you will agree. It's "Yeah, but every identity, social identity at least, has its dark side." And the key point is, "Can we get rid of it? Is it immanent to it?" For example, I wrote books about emancipatory potential of Christianity. I'm not anti-Christian. But isn't it clear, I'm sorry if I repeat my old point, when we read about all these pedophiliac scandals. What shocks me is that you cannot interpret them—two things prevent the common sense interpretation: "Okay, pedophiles are everywhere, of course they are also among the priests." No. First, the numbers; second, the way Church defends them. It's clear that this is part of the what I call obscene subterranean identity of the Church. They are literally a problem of the Church as an institution, it's not just a problem of individuals and so on and so on. And I claim that many of male crimes so-called—and I'm totally opposed to this brutality and so on—we should be attentive to this and I agree here with feminists. They are not simply personal pathology. They for example, in one of my books I report on it, it's a horrible story of which is the city south of El Paso? I always forget, city in across the border in Mexico where you have mass murders in a terrifying way, rape, mass rapes—sorry, Tijuana, yeah, yeah—mass rapes of women and so on. But if you look close at it, you see these are not individual outbursts of pathology, they are ritualized. They are a certain social symbolic form. The mystery is not this male brutality. That's why, to conclude, we should be so careful, my God, about I think this—you know how we fight back so-called patriarchy. For example, I wonder if you agree, to provoke you: I was shocked by this statement—we all know about it—of American Psychological Association which declared toxic masculinity an illness. First, are we aware what they did? Five decades ago it was homosexuality which was medicalized. Now they take masculinity, aggressive, clear social-ideological product, and they medicalize it. And it's a wonderful because friends told me who are part of this process, you know, big companies "Oh, they're already preparing pills against toxic masculinity, it's already part..." But you know where I'm what shocked me there? It's another thing. If you read the description of toxic masculinity, it goes I quote I repeat pretty liberally: that it’s a male attitude of when you are in a difficult situation, instead of reaching out to others, you enclose yourself into yourself and act out aggressively, hurting not only others but maybe even yourself. I'm sorry, I'm just shocked here. In some situations we—we call this and we call this courage. You have to act like this. And the greatest examples that come to me at least in history—and I will name you two examples, one ancient, one ultra-modern—are exactly women. If there was a toxically masculine agent it’s Antigone. Instead of going, "Creon, let's debate" and so on and so on, she stands on her own in a very dogmatic way, and sometimes we need dogmatism. And so at the end we will learn that Antigone is a man or whatever. No, you know what I worry? Here I do a more precise... then they tell me, "Oh but you want to defend men beating women." No, kill them. I’m one of the few persons that I know for death penalty. I don't get a problem with that. I'm just saying that we should be very precise in defining toxic masculinity in this way. They do something very dangerous: they propose a certain much more conformist logic of "don't act too radically, share it with others" and so on and so on as norm. I think it's part of new—it's part of new conformism, conformism and so on, no? So sorry, not to lose time. So what to do when you said it? I think and I agree here with both of you what you hinted at. First what you said, I absolutely agree it. Yeah, you were cutting off my head, no, basically yes for time, yeah. You—I like what you said that the only way even to show respect to Muslims: treat them like responsible adults and debate openly all this with them. For example, one point that makes me explode is this whenever Muslims don’t integrate it’s of course our guilt, we were not open enough towards them. Wait a minute! I read leftist, leftist I repeat it not some crazy a analysis of a friend of mine who went to those—what’s the name—those Brussels suburbs, Islamists. And they said it's a much more complex problem. The paradox is that you last wave of so-called terrorists where they come from? Parents were already much more integrated. And and so I think I would even problematize this. First, why integration? I wouldn't enforce integration of people. Maybe we should learn a certain distance and so on. I hate this liberal multiculturalist idea, "We should all integrate, understand each other." Sorry, I don't understand our myself, how could I understand you? You the only you probably don't understand yourselves, Islamists don't. The only thing I believe in—and here I'm an authentic multiculturalist—is that to understand an ethnic group, maybe even a person, you must estrange, you must acquire a distance. Almost all great writers did this. Look, Joyce wrote the greatest novel about Ireland. Ha! From Trieste and then Zurich. Beckett. Ha-ha! He even changed his language and did it in French and so on. I think that even you mentioned Borges, Argentina. An Argentinian friend told me that you know this Argentinian identity, Pampas and so on, all that? It’s produced by English British travelers around and then Argentinians when they got rid of the Spain domination, they identified with this foreign view you know. So, okay, to cut it short, my answer to you is: the catastrophe, I agree with you, on this pessimist list. Let's go to the end, my God. Right-wing populists today where they're in power are the only ones who dare to openly refer to the working class, and not just rhetorically. Even look what Kaczynski government—a nightmare—did in Poland: lowered retirement, better... so it’s we are in this crazy situation where right-wing populists are the only ones who dare to do old social democratic measures in a limited amount, while obviously the case of Greece demonstrates that if you want a perfect austerity program, the best thing is to have left in power and so on. And I agree just to now I'm really at the end, believe me or not, I think that the problem with the left is I think this is the we live in the negative legacy of '68, which brought about this culturalization as it were of leftist politics. I noticed how systematically social problems, political problems are culturalized. You know like we have racism, oh, you do a kind of a totally fake psychoanalysis: it means we are not open enough to the others, we project our traumas into the others and so on and so on. And this brings me to one of the most stupid statements. I almost become Goebbels here and say let’s burn books where they claim this, which is—it's really like I'm speaking like it's like I feel now like a—like a vampire swallowing garlic, you know, that an enemy is somebody whom we were not ready to listen, to hear his story. Ah, nice to hear this. So Hitler was our enemy because we didn't... No, we have to accept it! There are real enemies out there. It may be Islamists, it may be our fundamentalists and so on and so on. The left should stop this attitude of, "We are only our own enemies whenever we project something into an enemy" and so on and so on. So I think, I agree with you and with both of you, we should critically analyze this, let's call it cultural turn of the left. I think this is almost I would say the—the origin of the catastrophe. And you pointed out something very important: the extent to which although beneath surface, for example, political correctness in United States—I'm shocked to find this again and again—has a class dimension, although they would not admit it. But it's enlightened intellectual classes' way to dismiss ordinary people who still mistreat their wives and so on. You have absolutely cannot understand resistance against political correctness without the class dimension and that's what Donald Trump used in a masterful way. So as Winnetou said there in—"Ich habe gesprochen," so Howgh. Sorry for talking too much. While I was giving my great speech, what is your private flirting or there with what was going on there, you know this? This is my official communication with the organizer, my agent Alexandra Ötzelinger. This is purely official and we have to respect certain time limits here. Don't tell me this. This is the old most disgusting leftist strategy when they get tired and don't want debate to go on, just "You can go even one step lower and, you know, my left like to evoke, 'We could go on but there are cleaning ladies who want to go on earlier,' you know. All excuses come right just to cut the debate, you know." Slavoj, you have the privilege for a last word. I will say something which is not very typical for me, I will be very I'm there are many points where we agree I would say I totally agree with you that the '70s the situation was totally different. Just compare the spirit of that time, sexual liberation, with today's political correctness and you see an incredible difference. But I want to finish really with one Satz. Nonetheless we shouldn't forget politics and I propose a slogan to you, very clumsy, for your party like: *Mit Peter schöner Wetter für Österreich*. So, all the luck at the European elections, please. Yes, Slavoj, but please, Slavoj, I think this merits an answer. Do you have your microphone? I have it, yes. Yes, did you get the yes. I see, but you know my problem is this one. Look at—how do you call Gilet Jaunes—Yellow Vests in France, Gelbwesten. Yes, this is exactly the limit of links. They did exactly this, local rebellion and so on and so on, and they got support from Salvini and from—from Salvini and and from Trump and so on and so on. I—and I had long debates with this and even my friend with whom I have differences but basically I support him, Varoufakis, admitted this. The big mistake, no mistake, Greek fiasco shows the limit of this idea we can resist it through strong national government and so on and so on. Second thing, I doubt that it's really that those who are most immobilisiert are those who suffer today. First, I don't know what's the situation here in Österreich. But in Slovenien, the big problem are precisely those overmobile young people. In Slovenien, in younger generation till years, it's almost around if not more of people who have precarious jobs. And this means in today's situation also very mobile. They—they go to—to Austria, to Germany to get temporary jobs and so on and so on. So I of course and the limit also of this local approach is for me Spain. You see Podemos, yes, wonderful, their big ideology was listen to ordinary people, to their complaints and so on and so on. Well, in today's Europe, as you hinted up correctly—because okay, ideological manipulation whatever but nonetheless—if you listen to ordinary people and to their complaints where? You will certainly get a very strong anti-immigrant message, you know. So what I'm saying is that why do I mention very briefly Podemos? Because yes, their ideology was this, their leader Iglesias said once even in consciously provocative way, vulgar words, "Fuck left and right, fuck everything, ordinary people have their problems, listen to them." Yes, we should listen to their problems. We will not get answers from them. That's why the struggle is so—the struggle is so difficult. I'm just saying that—that if we just focus on this, you will this type of resistance, local... look, what will be the result of Yellow Vests or of Brexit, which also had strong support? I can predict it with absolute certainty. If United Kingdom does Brexit, it will be even more brutally exposed without minimal protection to international capital and so on and so on. Problems are real. I don't believe in ordinary people's wisdom, listen. No, they have problems, and this they are no worse and no better than us. They are confused like we are and so on and so on. You know, that's for me the problem of this. Look at Podemos again: in the last elections, when they had to propose a kind of a program, it was what? It was a very moderate social democracy and so on. It was nothing. But I must be sympathetic to them: the reason they are now in decay is also because quite heroically, they remain open towards Catalonia independence. They were not for it but they didn't want to condemn it. They play an honorable game there. But again, this is for me the problem. Yes, you should of course mobilize people on their own concerns. But wait a minute, these concerns are not specific to them. Why not—and why not think about building this kind of lateral international links, you know?
unknown
Because
Because
Slavoj Žižek
when people say specificity, I always think about China. They say we want to
when people say specificity, I always think about China. They say we want to
unknown
build socialism in a specific Chinese way. Specific Chinese way is precisely universal capitalism which you introduce
build socialism in a specific Chinese way. Specific Chinese way is precisely universal capitalism which you introduce
Slavoj Žižek
into... You know,
into... You know,
unknown
for me again,
for me again,
Slavoj Žižek
I think that we—like okay, I would agree with you, listen to local concerns and so on. But these concerns should absolutely not be reduced to nation state, to one's own ethnic
I think that we—like okay, I would agree with you, listen to local concerns and so on. But these concerns should absolutely not be reduced to nation state, to one's own ethnic
unknown
group and so on. But my God, why are you just looking
group and so on. But my God, why are you just looking
Slavoj Žižek
at at me? Why don't you say something? Please. Fridays For Future? Friday for Future, okay. Well, it's first, I was appalled yes by this Angela Merkel statement because if I read it correctly, understand it correctly, she played this paranoid game like this small girl cannot be alone, there must be some dark forces behind and so on and so on. No, you know what I—I totally support this movement, Greta and so on. You know why I like her? But don't take
at at me? Why don't you say something? Please. Fridays For Future? Friday for Future, okay. Well, it's first, I was appalled yes by this Angela Merkel statement because if I read it correctly, understand it correctly, she played this paranoid game like this small girl cannot be alone, there must be some dark forces behind and so on and so on. No, you know what I—I totally support this movement, Greta and so on. You know why I like her? But don't take
unknown
this in a psychological way, just as an attitude: her autism is part of her
this in a psychological way, just as an attitude: her autism is part of her
Slavoj Žižek
message. You know, it's precisely at a certain level, we need a certain type of dogmatic approach today. Dogmatic is can be a very good. What do I mean by this? I don't want to shock you in a cheap way. Listen, would you like to live in a society where you would have to—to debate democratically all the time, "Should women be raped or not?" No, I would like to live in a society where when somebody says, "Ah, but you know maybe women enjoy it" and so on, he simply disqualifies himself as an idiot. In this sense there should be... and it's the same and here we should measure moralisches Verfall, why not use these terms. Did you notice how our standards were lowered in the last years in this sense? We silently accepted Foltern, torture. It's now de facto accepted. Now you will be cynical and you will say, "But they were always doing it." Ah, I believe in appearances. Of course most of them were doing it. But it's a big, incredibly important step to say, "So let's legalize it at least" and—because first, if you know how power functions, if you legalize it they will do it even more in a different way and so on and so on. So again, a psychoanalytic notion from Freud, Verleugnung, this "Je sais bien, mais quand même." I know very well, but I still don't accept... Isn't it our predominant attitude towards ecological problems? We know very well, and sciences' analysts are telling us the dangers, but nonetheless don't take it too seriously, we have to be careful and so on and so on, maybe... and Greta's message, this is her autism: "I just know it very well. Cut off your 'mais quand même,' you know." And we need more of this approach, this is the line of Antigone for me, you know. She is the dogmatic. She says to Creon—sorry for vulgarity—"Fuck off, I want to bury my brother." And Creon says, "I know, but nonetheless look at the politic situation" and so on and so on. And remember always, she is the dogmatic clearly in the play. She doesn't give arguments, "No, unwritten laws, fuck off, I stand by it." And we may need more of this op—of this approach, you know. She doesn't say "We know everything" and so on. She just brought out this structure of fetischistische Verleugnung. "I know very well," but then you find all the excuses. You know, that's also how, for example, false liberal anti-racist fight racism. "Yes, it's horrible, but nonetheless it's a complex situation, we have to do it gradually" and so on and so on. Sometimes, a fresh wave of this type of dogmaticism, even this autism... Autism means she doesn't want to play these rhetorical games. And sometimes she provides a very good answer. I remember one of the lowest points apart from Merkel was a Belgian politician who reacted to her saying that children should she instead of striking should rather stay in schools and learn. And was it her or another member of that movement who said, "Learn what? What can we learn from you, how to ruin our earth?" and so on. You know, I she doesn't even pretend—I read her stuff—I have all the answers and so on and so on. Her message is simply and it's a deep message because most of us even—I don't think we really take ecological threat seriously. We think it's something, yes, it makes us... I even think that the subtle way the ruling ideology functions is to—use it as a way to make us feel good. "Yeah, yeah, it's a threat so I will recycle, I feel so good, you see, I'm not just a consumerist egotist, I do something for Mother Nature also" and so on and so on. And her message is just this one: "Yes, we don't know," and I accept all those there are also intelligent skeptics, not just global warming deniers who say maybe we don't know this, that and so on and so on. But what we know is that the situation is extremely serious. And her message is just "Let's take the game seriously. Stop with this, you know, double-triple game." So absolutely I think that absolutely that the most dangerous attitude today in with concerning ecology is not this outright denial, but this type of, you know, common-sense skepticism. "But maybe it's not so bad, let's be careful, who knows." Yes, we don't know, but as every intelligent ecologist will tell you, when we will know for sure, it will definitely be too late, you know. Das ist ein Stichwort leider. [Laughter/Applause]
message. You know, it's precisely at a certain level, we need a certain type of dogmatic approach today. Dogmatic is can be a very good. What do I mean by this? I don't want to shock you in a cheap way. Listen, would you like to live in a society where you would have to—to debate democratically all the time, "Should women be raped or not?" No, I would like to live in a society where when somebody says, "Ah, but you know maybe women enjoy it" and so on, he simply disqualifies himself as an idiot. In this sense there should be... and it's the same and here we should measure moralisches Verfall, why not use these terms. Did you notice how our standards were lowered in the last years in this sense? We silently accepted Foltern, torture. It's now de facto accepted. Now you will be cynical and you will say, "But they were always doing it." Ah, I believe in appearances. Of course most of them were doing it. But it's a big, incredibly important step to say, "So let's legalize it at least" and—because first, if you know how power functions, if you legalize it they will do it even more in a different way and so on and so on. So again, a psychoanalytic notion from Freud, Verleugnung, this "Je sais bien, mais quand même." I know very well, but I still don't accept... Isn't it our predominant attitude towards ecological problems? We know very well, and sciences' analysts are telling us the dangers, but nonetheless don't take it too seriously, we have to be careful and so on and so on, maybe... and Greta's message, this is her autism: "I just know it very well. Cut off your 'mais quand même,' you know." And we need more of this approach, this is the line of Antigone for me, you know. She is the dogmatic. She says to Creon—sorry for vulgarity—"Fuck off, I want to bury my brother." And Creon says, "I know, but nonetheless look at the politic situation" and so on and so on. And remember always, she is the dogmatic clearly in the play. She doesn't give arguments, "No, unwritten laws, fuck off, I stand by it." And we may need more of this op—of this approach, you know. She doesn't say "We know everything" and so on. She just brought out this structure of fetischistische Verleugnung. "I know very well," but then you find all the excuses. You know, that's also how, for example, false liberal anti-racist fight racism. "Yes, it's horrible, but nonetheless it's a complex situation, we have to do it gradually" and so on and so on. Sometimes, a fresh wave of this type of dogmaticism, even this autism... Autism means she doesn't want to play these rhetorical games. And sometimes she provides a very good answer. I remember one of the lowest points apart from Merkel was a Belgian politician who reacted to her saying that children should she instead of striking should rather stay in schools and learn. And was it her or another member of that movement who said, "Learn what? What can we learn from you, how to ruin our earth?" and so on. You know, I she doesn't even pretend—I read her stuff—I have all the answers and so on and so on. Her message is simply and it's a deep message because most of us even—I don't think we really take ecological threat seriously. We think it's something, yes, it makes us... I even think that the subtle way the ruling ideology functions is to—use it as a way to make us feel good. "Yeah, yeah, it's a threat so I will recycle, I feel so good, you see, I'm not just a consumerist egotist, I do something for Mother Nature also" and so on and so on. And her message is just this one: "Yes, we don't know," and I accept all those there are also intelligent skeptics, not just global warming deniers who say maybe we don't know this, that and so on and so on. But what we know is that the situation is extremely serious. And her message is just "Let's take the game seriously. Stop with this, you know, double-triple game." So absolutely I think that absolutely that the most dangerous attitude today in with concerning ecology is not this outright denial, but this type of, you know, common-sense skepticism. "But maybe it's not so bad, let's be careful, who knows." Yes, we don't know, but as every intelligent ecologist will tell you, when we will know for sure, it will definitely be too late, you know. Das ist ein Stichwort leider. [Laughter/Applause]